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Ill Away From Home

9 February 2016

By Oisin

I seem to be fairly susceptible to getting ill; maybe it’s just my poor student lifestyle. Being ill sucks, but being ill away from home sucks even more. You don’t have an unlimited supply of remedies and your parents aren’t around to wait on you hand and foot. You get all the negatives but none of the positives! Anyway, given my recent and awfully-handled virus, I decided I should compile a few basic tips to make dealing with sickness easier.

Tip 1: Always keep some paracetamol. Foolishly I gave mine away to a flatmate and forgot to replace it. I only realised when I felt a headache coming on and instead of being able to prevent it, I had the pleasure of feeling it grow.

Tip 2: Always have some easy food in your kitchen. I had good intentions when I did my shopping. I bought loads of healthy food, and no junk. I didn’t even buy a loaf of white bread! Anyway, this came back to haunt me when I found myself, the day after vomiting, with no motivation to cook and nothing else to eat. I’d advise having some tins of soup, or some white bread, or even one microwave pizza as an emergency supply. Especially as after being sick, you don’t want to have to cook (let alone eat!) a salad or a curry.

Tip 3: Sleep! This is probably the most important tip. Not just for being ill, but for life. As soon as I felt better I went back to my usual habit of staying up till 3am, even though I had a 9am lecture the next day. ‘It will be fine,’ I lied to myself, ‘you feel fine now; you’re recovered’. Little did I know that one of the worst hangovers (without even going out!) awaited me. I spent the next day in a trance-like state just trying to get through my lectures, and not even able to eat properly. I felt almost as bad as when I was actually ill.

Learn from my mistakes and you should save yourself some pain.

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