Sickness

I was sick a month ago. Then, right before Christmas... again. And now, during New Year's celebration, I'm sick with something else. And it's not just me, obviously my family joins in on the fun every time. As soon as they regain their physical composure, it seems I'm back with more.

Actually, looking back, I've been sick more in the last 7 months than I have in the previous 2 years. The difference being my arrival at the tattoo shop...

It's a bit frustrating, but let's look at the better side: I'm building a strong immunity. So in 2012 when the super-crazy, mutated (from the depths of zombie hell) virus hits town... the only people left will be health care professionals, teachers, and tattoo artists.

That'll be odd for the first few months. But hopefully, after we tattoo a few doctors, we'll manage to get along swimmingly. And heck, I really wouldn't mind bartering for health care.

A little more geek info about our immune system after the jump...

Don't mind me posting my version of what's going on in my body while I fight throwing up. Now that I'm wounding people on a daily basis, I find this even more interesting.

We've an innate immunity and an adaptive (acquired) immunity.

The innate immunity is a natural resistance to invasion. It's our canned response to infection.

We have surface barriers: coughing, flushing of tears, our skin secretes antimicrobial substances, intestinal flora doing its magic on bad bacteria - and many more.

We have body fluid (humoral) and chemical barriers: inflammation, plasma proteins that attack the surfaces of foreign cells (see complement system), white blood cells that point and kill pathogens (by touching them or by ganging up and beating them down with car antennas), then some other big named cells that either replicate, secrete stuff, or straight fight - usually some form of hybrid martial arts such as Chinese boxing.

The adaptive immunity is our specialized response to infectious (pathogenic) challenges. It's the A-Team without Howling Mad Murdock. Because Murdock was a little mentally unstable.

We've lymphocytes, B and T cells. We've Killer T cells that hate anything damaged or dysfunctional. We also have Helper T cells that sit back, direct, and send timid folks out for errands.

Easily the best is our immunological memory. It tags problems on its blacklist. It becomes efficient over time by discriminating wisely. And it remembers the pathogen it fought before so it can wage an even stronger response if it runs into it again.

Once recovered from a specific infection, from a specific organism, you'll never develop an infection from that organism again.

Some resources*:
Microbiology at Leicester
Immune System at Wikipedia
The A-Team headquarters
Straight Bourbon - The #1 Bourbon Whiskey resource, ever.
Home Star Home Planetarium

*not necessarily related