I wasn’t feeling good yesterday.

I got home from working with my friend Marie — after being unable to finish my chicken noodle soup, abusing Marie’s bathroom repeatedly and spraying the last of her “Crapper Trapper” (a Poo Pourri product with a military font to market to men but fine for ailing women), trudging the few blocks home with all my muscles seized up against the cold — and hopefully stuck a thermometer in my mouth before even taking my boots off.

By hopefully I mean mixed hopes: half hoping that I wouldn’t have a fever, because a fever sucks, and half that I would, because a fever sucks.

There’s something about a fever that makes being sick more legit.

You could have nausea, the squirts (sorry), all your breathing pathways swollen and blocked up with phlegm (sorry), a throbbing headache, or a life-threatening fungal rash (sorry), but if you’re temperature’s normal, you feel like a faker.

I watched the digital readout of my thermometer climb…and climb…and stop at 94.5. A letdown, but with possibilities.

I googled “temp of 94.5” and got satisfying answers on both webmd and answers.com.

Both asserted that I was very ill and should see a doctor. To me, “See a doctor” =  “Climb under a blankie, watch the dumbest thing on your dvd, and wanly ask your husband to fetch you more soda.”

There was still a lingering feeling of “less than” on the sickie spectrum, so when I started shivering, feeling hurt-y skin, and wanting to press my face against the cool cover of my iPad, hope rose anew and I took out the thermometer again.

The Silver-Tipped Stick of Validation.

This time, I watched the number rise and rise and rise, to just under a hundred. Iffy as fevers go, but still a badge of deserving to feel sorry for myself.

Fever’s gone today. Gotta do my work. No clients really care, anyway. They pay you if you do the work, not if you would’ve but had a fever.

Now you.

Do you secretly hope for a fever when you feel sick?

What’s the first sign you’re sick? Do you feel it in a moment, and think “uh oh”?

Do you have the constant need to announce it? Or just make sad noises?

TELL ME IN THE COMMENTS.

ps – Do you have a FEVER (cringe,sorry) to do something big this year? Marie Forleo’s B-School is open! ENROLLMENT CLOSES WEDNESDAY, MARCH 4TH. Click the button below.