‘You have pneumonia. Is that house in Dublin warm enough?’

READER, I am writing this column from my death bed.

I hope you’re grateful that I’m spending my last precious moments on this planet explaining to you all how I shall be the first Irish person to die from the common cold in modern times.

Please do not waste your time emailing to call me a hypochondriac or a drama queen or a “big fat cry baby” (thanks family member who shall go unnamed), for here is the simple truth: I. Am. Dying.

I would like to leave my credit card debt to my father for sentimental reasons, but I insist that I am buried wearing all of my rings.

I know no one who deserves such beautiful jewellery as much as my cold corpse.

You see, I never get sick. Ever.

“Oh, you’re not feeling the best. You poor thing,” is what I like to say with a sympathetic head-tilt as a red-nosed, sniffling, breeding ground of germs whines about their head cold.

“Don’t worry,” I tell them, “I won’t catch that.

“I have what some might call a super-human immune system.”

I can’t count the amount of times I’ve been the only member of my family to escape a vomiting bug or a nasty flu.

I’ve tucked my mother or my sister into bed, stroked their hair and whispered “there, there”, but all the time I’ve secretly been revelling in a sense of superiority that I enjoy immensely.

I’ve played the Nurse Nightingale role and I’ve played it well, but now I’m ready to tell you what I really think — getting sick is for the weak and for those who read the newspapers and think that Ebola is something they’re likely to pick up in their local swimming pool unless they use industrial-strength hand sanitizer gel.

I just feel like I’m better than that.

As a result of this, you can imagine my surprise when I woke up last week feeling a little, well, strange.

I could barely breathe; I was wheezing; there was this barking noise that seemed to come from my chest.

So I did what every self-respecting 30-year-old does when they’re faced with a challenge — cooking roast chicken, figuring out washing instructions that they can’t understand... I phoned my mother.

Me: Hey mom.

Her: Hey sweetheart. Are you feeling okay?

Me: No. I can’t breathe and my voice sounds weird.

Doesn’t it sound weird?

Her: It sounds like you have a cold.

Me: Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t get sick. But I do keep making this barking noise.

*demonstrates noise.*

Her: Louise, that’s a cough.

Me: Well, whatever it is, it hurts my ribs when I do it.

Her: Oh my god, you have pneumonia. Is that house in Dublin warm enough? Is it?

Me: I DO NOT HAVE PNEUMONIA. I DO NOT GET SICK. PNEUMONIA IS FOR OLD PEOPLE.

Her: Louise, stop yelling at me. Go to the pharmacy.

The pharmacy.

The pharmacy, she says in such a casual tone, as if I haven’t been sneering at Western medicine for the last 10 years and telling people that they should be able to cure a broken elbow/collar bone/heart with some Echinacea and some positive thinking.

I lay in bed for another couple of hours after that, visualising a healing light sweeping my body of all toxins, before falling into a coughing fit so long that I’m pretty sure it constitutes a near-death experience.

After sneezing 15 times in a row (NB: It was nothing like an orgasm. The teen magazines of the late 90s were lying to me), I wanted to kill myself, all the healthy people in the world, and then God for creating a world where head colds exist.

I quickly abandoned all previously-held convictions and bought so many over-the-counter drugs that I looked like I was about to set up my own crystal meth lab.

There are two days afterwards that cannot be accounted for.

I would like to take this opportunity to apologise for any.. inappropriate text messages I may have sent and I place all responsibility onto the very-drowsy-indeed cough syrup.

Please forgive me, every man I’ve met in the last six months.

But look, it worked.

I’m back to full health and have very reluctantly put the Solpadeine away because knowing my luck, I’d become addicted and have to go to rehab and none of the cool girls would want to hang out with me.

“Do you see your wan?” they’d say derisively, “addicted to Calpol she is” and then they’d all laugh at me behind my back.

The shame of it would kill me.

PS — To any friends who doubt the veracity of the above account as they can recall numerous occasions where I’ve been ill, I have a confession to make.

I was only pretending to be sick because I didn’t feel like washing my hair and leaving the house. I’m sorry.