I thought I’d dodged the bullet last month when both daughters ended up missing several days of school with the nasty cough/fever/head-cold thing that’s been going around.
Not quite. Woke up Monday with a tickle in my throat and the realization that the next 48-72 hours would be unpleasant. And they were.
If you’re looking for restful sleep, then don’t combine Nyquil, a fever and MSNBC on the TV. Wound up having a strange nightmare yesterday in which I seemed to be some kind of campaign staffer and everyone was blaming me for giving this same nasty cough/fever/head-cold thing to the candidate right before the big debate. (In the weird dream-logic of the thing, I seem to have worked for both candidates and gotten both of them sick.)
It is remarkable that candidates aren’t forced to call in sick more often. I work from home and I still couldn’t avoid this latest bug. But Obama and Romney are traveling all over the country “pressing the flesh” with thousands of people every day.
A couple of days knocked off my feet have me appreciating what James Fallows recently described as “The Secret Factor in Running for President“:
It is amazing that the four people left on the national stage — Romney, Obama, Ryan, Biden — bear up as well as they do.
See also his follow-up: “On Fatigue and the Presidency: ‘Backwards and in High Heels.’”
I’d love to see an article sharing and comparing health tips from political campaign veterans from both parties. Do they have secret tricks the rest of us don’t know about? Or is it just the same combination of sleep and liquids, hot showers and honey-lemon-tea, that the rest of us use?
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