It is hard to think of something worse than waking up with a fever, killer stomach ache, or an uncontrollable migraine.

Especially on a school day.

I used to view getting sick as a good day off from school, as if it was a snow day just for me.  Sure I hated being sick, but a fever has never stopped me from blasting away n00bs and teaching rebellious scum a lesson in “Call of Duty.”

Then I took my first sick day this year, and the downside of sick days hit me like several hundred pages from an unread textbook.  I discovered I had not ‘taken’ a day off from school but merely borrowed a few extra hours of sleep from the equivalent of a mafia loan shark.

Let me assure you, the loan shark came to collect.

For my one day of recovery, in which I spent almost 15 hours sleeping, I had to make up some kind of work before school, after school, and during my free period for the next three days.  Physics lab, math test, essay:  if you can name it, there was probably one waiting in a learning center for me.  I had so much work to make up that I actually lost even more sleep than I had regained on my “day off.”

Naturally, that had all kinds of awesome effects on my body, which was totally prepared to cope with it, especially after the fever.  Fortunately for me, by that point it was Saturday, so I did not end up missing any more school.  Still, I can only imagine what it would have been like to miss even more work.

It’s a cruel fact of life that as more pressure to perform is applied to students, our immune systems falter; and we become susceptible to all kinds of diseases.  Stressw weakens more not just the mind, but the body as well.  The little colds and fevers that our white blood cells should have brushed away without a thought suddenly become much more menacing.  When we need to study and work at our maximum capabilities, a disease can swoop right into our sleep-deprived bodies.

The worst part is that there is nothing we can do about it, short of getting more sleep.  Of course, telling a high schooler to get more sleep is like telling an adult to make more money:  “Great idea, honey! Why didn’t I think of that?”

Really, all the advice that can be given to stay healthy is pretty obvious stuff.  The doctor always stresses the right way to take medications, tissues are available in most classrooms as well as the nurse’s office, and if you managed to graduate from elementary school you probably know that washing your hands is one of the easiest and most effective ways to prevent the spread of disease.  Beyond that, many of the factors leading to sickness are beyond our control.

Missing school starts off a vicious cycle that has no easy resolution, so all I can say is this: get well soon!