I've already had Mono. I hear you can not get it again.

On Wednesday I informed my teachers that I was sick. 
"Oh yes," one of my coteachers told me, "I also have a cold.  My nose is running."

"Mmm," I replied, my tone chosen so as to acknowledge her as a brother in arms.  "I am staggered by dizzy spells and my eyes desperately want to come out."

"Ah, I have just the thing for you," she said.  "It is an old Korean proverb.  I don't want to leave you in suspence, so I will tell you now that the message in the end is to study harder.  It goes like this-"

I rudely interupted her by selfishly submitting to a coughing fit that continued for the twenty minutes that remained in lunch.  When I awoke from it my throat was still seized, and I could taste the blood from my broken nose which I had managed to embarasse myself with when I slumped out of my chair from an inability to breath.

After I made a formal apology, we walked together to the clinic to get my teacher some medicated tissues for her sensitive nose-skin and perhaps have a doctor see to my growing lesions if there was time.  On the way, my coteacher put me to ease with questions and assumptions about my belief in god. 

With her tissues procured and a few minutes remaining, I was allowed to go before the doctor.  A prescription was written for three days worth of standard cure all horse pills and the physician asked me if I'd like a shot.  I was all set to recieve the vaunted Korean insta-remedy, but when the needle was proffered I had to mask my disapointment.  As it turns out, their policy is to save the valuable medication for patients they deam "not whinners" and I was to be given a shot of air instead.  Patients in Korea are informed before hand if they are expected to benefit from the placebo effect.  In this way, failure to benefit from the ruse-medication is known always to be the fault of the recipient and not the care provider.  In my case, the placebo effect was likely the only thing that kept the airbubble injected into my veins from killing me.  For the rest of the week I sweat profusely, buckets of what smelt strongly like gasoline.  The children forced me to do their homework and threatened me with small flints, which they scraped ominously in their pockets.