Why are men such terrible invalids?

Last week I spent the better part of my days in bed suffering a bacterial infection. It was a tough week although I was on annual leave and was supposed to be jumping up and down attending all possible functions. But I had to be strong for the sake of my daughter who doesn’t know the meaning of falling sick. She was all over me sitting on my poor head and screaming in my ears.

At some point, I even decided to play dead thinking she would let me be but she never did. If anything, it gave her morale to harass me even more since I was not reacting when she whacked me on my head or bottom. This is one of those times that, as a mother, one feels like a little heroine after withstanding ill health coupled with blows and kicks.

All this reminded me of the time I had to nurse a grown man suffering from flu. I mean flu - not like he had broken a rib and was on life support machine! Men always have the tendency to say no to medication even when they have one foot in the grave. Someone lied to them that they are strong enough and their bodies are perfect painkillers for themselves.

So the moment a man feels sick, he will be quick to tell you how insignificant the illness is and they can manage. Three hours into the ailing, you might as well get a stretcher, an ambulance, and flying doctors to resuscitate him. No wonder they are like the firstborn children of any marriage.

Try visiting any man in the hospital and you will understand what I mean. You will hear them breathing from the ground floor yet they are admitted on the second floor. The same men whose wives had to plead and almost call a press conference for them to leave their homes for the hospital. Their parents have to travel all the way from their rural homes to come and nurse them and their wives have to take an annual leave from work to be on standby. One might think that the sick man is down with all serious infections while in the real sense, it is just the mere flu. They can always sneeze their way out of the infection but they choose to sulk and stare at people like they are from Jupiter. This man I once nursed made me call our church elders to the hospital just to pray for him because I felt like the medication wasn’t working. Every time he sneezed, my heart would skip a beat as I thought he would sneeze his lungs out. He wouldn’t drink water or eat his food. Medication time became a time when I would be taught and retaught the history of man and how he is the head of the family and is stronger. I always wished he would let out this strength he was always talking about as he looked like he was always about to collapse.

This made me come to this conclusion; I would rather nurse a baby than a fully grown man who can comfortably say where the pain is. These same men will make you cook for them when you are down with malaria, typhoid, and chikungunya all at once. They will feel your forehead, say how high your temperature is then going ahead to tell you how much they would wish to eat on chapati for supper. They just don’t understand what it feels like to be a sick woman in the house with a stubborn husband and hyper children.

So last week as I lay in bed writhing in pain and wondering where to get the strength to stand my hyper daughter, I thanked God for the absence of a man in that house. I appreciated that I had no wifey duties to attend to. For sure, God blessed us women not only with a sixth sense but the extra strength to stand the test of time. I salute all wives out there who have to put up with husbands who act like they can see the gates of heaven when they have only got the sniffles.