Superman falls

Last week, I informed you I am invincible. This week, I would like to repeat that I am still invincible, much in the way Superman is invincible, even when he lost all his powers for a brief spell.
If you recall, I told you of how my family had succumbed to weakness and gotten sick for a two-week stretch. It started with my wife, who passed it on to our son, who shared it with his sister. I, of course, am too awesome to get sick. At least with their pitiful strain of sickness.
Clearly, the sickness that overtook me the very same day that column was published was from a different strain – one most likely created in a lab for use as chemical warfare but deemed far too cruel for use on actual humans. That is the only explanation as to how I got sick. Or, as I was quick to remind my wife, sicker than anyone on the planet had ever been.
It started with a bit of a tickle in the throat. Just something in the air, I assumed. Nothing that a constant, vocal, annoying clearing of my throat wouldn’t cure. Because this was an aggressive and angry version of sickness, the tickle quickly moved to a full-blown hacking, disgusting cough, one of those uncontrollable, full-body seizing coughs that causes you to lunge forward and your eyes to water and creates a general full-body quake that makes you look like you’re doing a Joe Cocker impersonation, to the point where your wife then says, “Seriously? The interpretive dance part? A little much.”
While it would have probably been in the best interest to have myself immediately admitted into the finest medical facility in the world so that I could offer medical specialists an opportunity to study the world’s most ferocious sickness, my wife suggested I instead take some NyQuil and go to bed. I reminded her that my sickness was nothing like the ones she and the kids had experienced.
I did not sleep well that night, mainly because I had convinced myself that my sickness would turn to a flesh-eating virus any time now. By morning, I decided I would get up long enough to take our son to school, and then I would come home and wail and moan loudly until I realized no one was there to hear it.
My wife called and asked me how I was feeling.
“Auuuggghhh,” was my response.
She asked me if I was running a fever, as she and the kids had all topped 102 during their pedestrian sick time. I told her that I did have a fever and that 98.8 was a far worse fever because it is so close to NOT having a fever that it lulls you into thinking you’re not sick. At that point, something must have happened with the phone line, as it went dead suddenly. Perhaps my sickness ate through it.
That night, as I was packing a bag for my inevitable medical experiment ship-off, my wife again suggested I take some NyQuil. And the sooner the better. She told me she was tired of hearing about it, which, as you know, means that it was taxing on her to constantly hear the horrors of my sickness, much like hearing the anguished cries of a loved one having their flesh attacked by piranhas. (I have not actually heard someone be attacked by piranhas, but I would imagine the cries are quite anguished.)
By the next day, I was feeling much better, which shows that my sickness was clearly not related to theirs, as the three of them stretched it out for two weeks. Fortunately, like Superman, I was able to overcome and defeat it and was soon back in top form. I know my wife was glad to see that I was better, as it had to be painful witnessing the horror that I had endured and to know that I had taken on the insidious sickness to spare my family. The things I do for these people.
I know some of you are relishing in what you perceive as me having jinxed myself. To which I say, “Pshaw.” Clearly, I did not have the same illness. Mine, like kryptonite, was probably not of this world. But, like, Superman, I fought valiantly and am once again invincible. Except for this little tickle that’s back in my throat ...