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Recently I read a touching and thought-provoking book about how a human being under extremely adverse conditions can realise meaning in unavoidable suffering by transcending his condition and enduring suffering with dignity. The message was simple and challenging: we may not be able to choose our particular adversity, but we choose how we react to it, either with dignity and fortitude of spirit or without.

It all sounded very inspiring as I read about people who had endured terrible personal tragedy and horrendous privation in concentration camps during the Second World War. I resolved to try and exercise this theory of consciously choosing to be master of my attitude come what may. This would certainly be a welcome change from my rather shoot-from-the hip reactions to the small slings and arrows of outrageous fortune I had encountered thus far on my earthly journey.

As luck would have it, a pesky little arrow struck me soon after my resolution. I tripped over a root while jogging in the dark and collided with the tar, cutting my hands and grazing my calf. A flesh wound, dear Sir Knight, a lunatic armour clad lad from Monty Python might protest, but to one with deep hypochondriac suspicions such as myself, a flesh wound might lead to, Byzantine only knows! Gangrene. Amputation. My running buddy, conveniently also a medical doctor, assured me I was safe from road tetanus, a condition I invented upon colliding with the gravel.

JACQUI ZURCHER lives in Cape Town near a house with very noisy rottweilers. She is a freelance journalist with an honours degree in Computer Science and a Postgraduate Diploma in African Studies, majoring in Postcolonial English Literature from UCT. On occasion she has been known to dabble in IT. Got something to say about Jay Walking? Email Jacqui...

Road tetanus off my list of nasty eventualities, I disinfected the wound neurotically to delay the onset of necrosis. While a watched kettle may never boil, so, it seems, a watched wound takes its own sweet time to heal. After a heated interior monologue, I convinced myself I was out of the woods and in a week or so, the gashes on my hands would be no more than mildly unsightly scars under a layer of vitamin e oil.

But, just as the flesh started to knit together on my hands, my chest started to tingle. I casually phoned two friends who occasionally suffer from asthma and questioned them on the exact nature of the symptoms. It appeared my chest irritation, although annoying, did not constitute acute breathing restriction or wheezing.

The pharmacist was next on my list for interrogation. Surveying my bloodshot eyes and pasty complexion while I recited my symptoms of sporadic coughing fits and having about as much energy as a dog coming round after a neutering operation, he pronounced me viral.

Rest, vitamins and a good cough mixture were prescribed. I made my way home, and sat down to read the little paper insert enclosed with my cough mixture. Contra indications included dizziness and drowsiness which might be aggravated by the intake of alcohol. Great. To cure my cough I might have to decrease my already amoebic energy levels and most distressingly, could not even indulge in a consolatory glass of merlot. I smsed my nearest and dearest with the news of my ailing health, and crawled into bed with a heavy sigh.

Self pity and the panic of a busy person contemplating rest and recuperation overwhelmed me. The resolution to weather my small local adversities with fortitude and courage seemed abstract and remote. I was uncomfortable; I was inconvenienced by my own lethargy. My chest felt like it was about to be pulverized and projectile coughed into Outer Mongolia. Ulan Bator was heading for a disease infested summer thanks to me.

Fortunately for the CDC and their Asian branches, the cough syrup worked wonders. Mongolia was spared and remained free to inspire healthy-eating stir fry meals.

As I dozed under the influence of my cough mixture and the warmth of a fluffy blanket, I realised how essentially charmed was my illness experience. The inconvenience was minor, the illness transient and my capacity to deal with it manifold in the form of material comforts and indulgent sms’s from caring friends and family.

I chided myself for my melodrama. Perhaps, one day, I’ll transcend flumoania.