Over the past few months, I have come to an important realization. I decided that I don’t like being sick. Unfortunately, I have put a lot of research into making this decision. I kind of felt this way when I had bronchitis a couple of times in December, but I thought I’d hold off before making a final answer.

A nice little stomach virus helped me reach that answer this week.
I do have to say that I don’t think I’m the only one in the house who feels this way. We all have had different struggles this winter, which is pretty unusual.

Most years, I have to handle a sinus issue or two and Bridget gets the sniffles, but that’s about it.

This year, we’re like an episode of “Grey’s Anatomy” without all the kissing and marrying. Each one of us has had at least one bad illness since Christmas.

I did get to miss two days of work, but that meant having to make up two days of work and wading through scads of e-mail and voice mail on my first day back.

This decision did not come as easily as you might think. After 24 hours of suffering from the virus, I stepped on our scale and noticed I had lost 10 pounds. I silently calculated how many more illnesses I would need before I hit my ideal weight.

Quickly that thought went out of my head as I realized that I could not survive on Jell-o and Gatorade alone.

In the end, it was food that made me realize how much I disliked lying in bed feeling miserable.

For starters, our Girl Scout cookies arrived while I was laid up. Can you imagine looking at boxes upon boxes of Thin Mints and not even wanting to try one?

Well, I wanted to try one, but I pretty much knew how that would end up so I passed. I had to wait 24 whole hours before I had my first cookies. They were the greatest cookies I had ever tasted in my life.

I’m sure those of you who know me figure that I shouldn’t complain because my wife took great care of me in my darkest hour.

Not really. She tried to kill me. Well, not kill, but prolong my illness.

I found a can of chicken noodle soup in the cabinet after I started feeling a little better. My Mom always made me chicken noodle soup when I was sick so I figured this would do the trick.

Then I looked at the top of the can. It read “May 2002.”

A debate ensued about whether that represented the sell by date or the use by date, Maria kept encouraging me to just eat the soup.

Of course the date ended up being the use by date. We don’t eat a lot of canned soup, so that thing had sat there for five years or so.

That didn’t faze Maria. She told me I should eat the soup. She told me that would make the column funnier.

Yeah, right. Funnier because I would get sick again and lose 20 pounds.