Clean bill of health

‘Supp fools. Welcome back. Before we begin, thank you for bearing with me while I was away. There will be another post tomorrow to show my gratitude. Secondly, this post may get edited over the next few days, and I doubt I’ll be indicating those edits. The reason: it’s been a busy week and I’m exhausted, and this post might be a little scrappy. I’d really like to fix any problems I find when I read over it later. However, I also want to stick to some sort of schedule with this blog- I don’t want to miss my updates without a solid reason, and I don’t count being sleepy and having left it too late as good enough. So, on with the show.


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I return from Thailand tanned, lithe, smug and most importantly: free from hepatitis A. This disease, like other strains of hepatitis, causes inflammation of the liver, but is generally self-limiting and rarely serious. On the other hand, it can lead to fatigue, fever, abdominal pain, nausea, diarrhoea, depression, jaundice, loss of weight and itching (the level of itching is not specified by Wikipedia, which makes it all the more sinister). So hepatitis is clearly no picnic, unless your picnic basket only contains neat vodka, rotten meat and rainwater.

Hepatitis A is not a real problem in most of Europe, because not only is the body capable of dealing with the infection in the short term, it also produces antibodies to stop you contracting the disease again. This is one of the small but myriad miracles that your body performs for you for no extra charge. You don’t even have to ask your brain nicely. Actually contracting hep A is also rare in Europe. It is borne in food and drink, and is largely transmitted by faecal contact, so good food hygiene and clean water supplies can keep it at bay. In other parts of the world, like Thailand, it is more common, but visitors to these countries can receive inoculations to prevent them contracting the malady. Unless, like yours truly, you completely forget and fail to get any injections whatsoever.

My name is Joshua, and I am a hypochondriac. I don’t go to the support meetings because I’m afraid I’ll catch something. I tried to remain nonchalant about the whole thing, but secretly was convinced that I would spend most of my trip prostrate in an under-equipped medical facility, deciding what to spend my insurance money on (it would have been beer and sandwiches, like always).
Despite my medical irresponsibility I came back in perfect health (although I hope your understanding of ‘perfect’ is a little fluid). The realisation that I could have fallen ill made me appreciate my well-being all the more. So far, so yadda yadda yadda. I could’ve got ill, and I didn’t. Big whoop, wanna fight about it? The above story made me realise, however, how little we really have to worry about in comparison to the past, and how little that really matters in the present day.

That came off a little happy-clappy; let me elucidate. In the Western world we are shielded from most of the diseases that plagued all those boring old people. We are protected from the elements, from hunger and… oh, I don’t know, bears and stuff. But without experience of those problems, the relief we might feel at this higher standard of living is reduced. The crap we actually have to deal with is also largely forgotten, as we rationalise the risk in order to deal with our everyday lives. I don’t worry unduly about getting hit by a car (although it’s different for me, I have the reflexes of a cat). I doubt most Thais are kept awake by the threat of hep A.

What’s really scary? Novelty. I was probably more likely to get run over on my way to the airport than catch a foreign disease. I could scald myself to death boiling the kettle. But introduce a new threat and I was petrified. What is new is frightening, at least in the short term. Swine flu probably won’t wipe out the human race (if this has already happened and you are reading this from the future, I apologise. If I didn’t make it, you can have my Xbox) and as time goes by, the panic will subside. The threat won’t really have disappeared, but anxiety is difficult to sustain without new evidence.

So next time I’m worried about something, I’m going to ask myself a few questions. Is what I’m frightened of really a huge risk, or is it merely something I have yet to encounter? Are my new fears comparably small, compared to what I put up with on a daily basis? And most importantly… is there something I can do to reduce the problem, and have a better time in the process? I mean really, who forgets their vaccinations? What a fucking idiot.