Ague and goiters and boils, oh my.

One thing I knew about walking pneumonia:

• You can sing it to the tune of “Waltzing Mathilda.” Similarly, “diverticulitis” scans beautifully to “Gary, Indiana” from The Music Man.

Two things I didn’t know about walking pneumonia:

• It is not merely a vernacular reference to an undefined group of diseases; it is in fact a generally accepted name for a specific atypical pneumococcal virus.
• I have it.

Which gives me medically-sanctioned and spousally-enforced time to rest, recover and ponder other things, like: what about all those other folksy disease names? The ones from Chaucer through Shakespeare and well into Wodehouse, a vast array with which I am casually acquainted but not intimately familiar? “Chilblains,” said the husband, and I replied, “Frostbite… maybe? Hmmm.”

So while waiting for yet another infuriatingly disappointing episode of Project Runway, I’m going to play a little game with my own ignorance called “I Do Not Think That Means What I Think It Means.” First I guess, like this:

Ague (me): a fever with chills? The real question here is how I’ve been reading this word for mumblemumble years and still don’t how to pronounce it. Ogg? Weird. Ogg-YEW? Weirder. Ayg with a hard “g” (which is also Texan for “egg” (unless you’re in East Texas, in which case it’s ay-ug))?

Then I look it up.

Ague (reality): a bad fever with chills. Or just a case of the shakes, as with chills. Or malaria, which could include all of the above. Batting a thousand! Pronunciation… oh. Well. Turns out I wasn’t even in the ballpark: it’s from the same French root as “acute” and retained its semi-Francophone identity as AY-gyoo. So I was half-right. Thanks a lot, Guillaume le Frenchie Conquérant with your accent… aigu. Damn. Total butterfly effect moment.

Goiter (me): a growth somewhere about the head or neck, maybe removable, almost certainly containing some sort of alien life form capable of controlling its hapless human host. Possibly pendulous. Never seen one, but have vague memories of a horrific description from my mother of a goiter she saw in her youth. It changed her somehow.

Goiter (reality): an enlarged thyroid gland. What? That’s it? A swollen gland? The sight of a swollen gland scarred my mother for life? Let’s see a pict…

Back from ineffectually scrubbing my eyeballs. I’m sorry. I’m just… I’m sorry…

Moving on.

Wait, one more.

Chilblains (me): cold fingers or toes, maybe mild frostbite? Certainly nothing serious; more along the lines of a quaint Dickensian character introduction, the charming homeless ruffian or the crusty ex-soldier nursing them at a welcome fire as the chapter opens.

Chilblains (reality): Well, what do you know? Inflammation of extremities responding to sudden warming from cold. Pretty close, although unrelated to frostbite, and the charming/crusty ruffian/veteran is actually exacerbating the pain and swelling with that cheery fire, may have a serious underlying circulatory condition and if he keeps up this in-from-the-cold-to-a-hearty-fire crap the swelling could turn into splitting, cracking, seeping, bleeding opportunistic infections.

Picturesque kind of sucks when you’re in it. Take it from an aguey waltzing Mathilda.