Plate of the Plague: A Microbial Tango with the Microscopic World

 As I lay here in the night, with the devilish blue light twinging against my aching eyes, I feel a great heat emanating from my forever partner. I hear a deep sigh rattle out of him, and I feel the movement of his body as he reaches for tissue, one after another. He is incapacitated. Stuck and melodramatic in my eyes.

I cannot understand it. He calls it the "Man Flu."

What makes it any more different if a man has it versus a woman? I have gone through various lengths, stretching my head as if it were malleable putty, just so I may be able to wrap my mind around it. Alas, I am just as incapacitated as he. Stuck. I do not understand this illness.

All around my feet, it circles—and then it sits. Like an obedient dog, it begs the question from me:

Do men feel illness worse than women?

It came as soon as it went. Guilt. I cannot imagine such theatrics from something as mild as a head cold or a sniffle. I bleed every month. My barren uterus twists its cruel face at me and pangs me with a reminder of my failed biological task. My memory has been reminded month after month for eleven years now—a pain I knew as a young girl will live with me until my uterus feigns amnesia or I am able to calm the beast by giving in to my task.

But how does this relate to sickness?

If a young girl can live the rest of her life with a painful reminder, how come men can’t handle a simple illness? And it’s not like women don’t get sick either. They do. But a majority of women push through and pay no attention to the snot running out of their nose or the annoyance of a cough. It simply just is.

Is it because women are so used to pain in their day-to-day lives that the presence of a common cold is registered as a mere irritant? Do men not feel such fluctuations throughout their daily baseline—that they feel so effortlessly fine—that a mere common cold is such an impertinence?

The temerity of men, I give them that.

But I also truly feel.

To bask in the Sun’s glory, high on the cliffs of life, only to have a small rock slide and their backs feel the coldness of the sea. I feel for them. I too would not enjoy it. However, I confess, I bathe in the Pacific Ocean.

But this is not a game of who has the upper hand. There is no reason to keep tallies between the sexes.

I am merely curious. Why? Just why?

Well, lovely reader, we must first dive into learning about some of the oldest diseases known to humankind. And without further ado, let's ask our dearly departed.

Ancient bones!

As many of you may or may not know, certain diseases can alter the physical bones of a person—tuberculosis being one of them, causing lesions. Because of these lesions, we are able to excavate these remains and carbon-date them. From the age of the bones—especially with lesions—we can determine when the disease was present. We can also trace these diseases through DNA tissue from well-preserved bodies, like mummies.

Fortunately and unfortunately, disease generally doesn’t care if you’re a biological man or a woman. You will experience the same symptoms if contracted.

So what is the significance of this? Why do women not feel as sick as men?

Remember how I said we can trace disease through DNA? Well, we need to take a look at chromosomes. Biological men are XY and biological women are XX. The X chromosome is responsible for the building blocks of a human's immune system. While women seem to almost have a double reinforcement of their immune system (XX), men only carry one X—which may suggest that their immune system doesn’t carry the same shielding.

In simpler terms: women have a bigger army inside their bodies to fight the war against germs.

To ensure that the immune system is functioning properly, estrogen (a hormone highly expressed in women) tends to be a failsafe. Testosterone (a hormone highly expressed in men), on the other hand, can soften the immune system's alarm bells—rendering men's internal defense unarmed and their bodies to bear the brunt of the symptoms.

And as we all are familiar, especially most women month to month, women carry the responsibility to potentially carry offspring one day. Perhaps the idea of keeping a woman strong and healthy in terms of disease resistance is less for her, and more in line with keeping her children safe until term.

Preserving the longevity of women serves as a long-term plan to ensure a stable future for the generations to come—whilst men’s longevity isn’t considered out of service, but in terms of luxury.

In essence, women cannot afford to be sick. Nature will not allow it for very long.

So maybe the “Man Flu” isn’t something to be laughed at or considered theatrical. We all carry the weight of unbridled burdens that cannot be equally shared.

It’s unequivocal to assume one sex has it better than another simply for the fact that I cannot comprehend what it is to feel.

To feel the heaviness that sits on his chest when he coughs, whilst my body provides me with plated armor. To feel the rattle in my throat like his, when my body coaxes the sound out of me like gifting a baby a toy. To feel this need to curl up in a ball and lay within a dark room—when my body gives me the energy to power through and stand straight.

In the end, if you scoffed and decided to keep score anyway, let me update you with the play-by-play:

We are at odds. 0–0. No one has won, but we are constantly at war.

Whether we have the defenses in place or not, sickness does not discriminate. It only takes.

Like a miserly slot machine, we hope to score big. But sometimes we come up short and lose more than we wanted.

In sickness and in health is the promise I made to him. And although I do not understand his sickness in a physical aspect, I was able to stretch my curious mind a little further to understand him mentally.

For that—it will have to do.

Until my archaic bones are discovered and some lone archaeologist questions the lesions on my bones.

It will have to be for now: humans dancing the dangerous microbial tango with the microscopic world.

The germs are hungry for me, waiting… watching… to see if my immune system will fault me and render me sick.

Until then – Pass the plate, I’m hungry for more information.

—KSF