Winter brings both great and terrible things. This bittersweet season promises Christmas, sledding, and above all else, ice skating. Yet it also brings along slippery roads and weather so miserable it makes Siberia look like the next Spring Break location.

What’s haunted my life this winter, however, isn’t some accidental fender bender brought about by a patch of sadistic ice, or even the mile-long trek from the barren wasteland of the Synagogue parking lot to the oasis only known as the BSM main entrance, but the neverending siege on my immune system.

I’ve been on a steady streak of illnesses since the beginning of Christmas break. Right before leaving for winter vacation, I contracted a nasty cold that followed me around for the entire trip, until it decided that my symptoms were too easy and developed into full-blown influenza.

My mother happens to be doctor, so I figured she could just prescribe me some omni-pill to cure me of my plague. However, one panicked phone call later, and I was straight out of luck, my mother assuring me that the only serious case I had was one of hypochondria, and that I did not have the flu.

Sadly, several days later, I found out that she had lied to me. She knew that I had influenza but decided not to diagnose me because there was a nationwide shortage of the medicine, and they were only giving it out to the “really sick kids.” Apparently, she could tell over the two-minute phone call that this description did not include her daughter.

Since then, I have accommodated two other ailments, adding up to a grand total of four things that have tried to kill me. After the flu, strep throat with features so vicious that I thought my last dying breath was going to be, “Mom, I’m actually sick.”

I’m no hypochondriac. Either my mom is secretly planning my assassination, or she needs to retake her courses in diagnosis. I am officially sick, of being sick.