My nervous stomach - one who never walks alone

'); } You'll never walk alone is an anthem for FC Liverpool. However, I'm not a supporter of FC Liverpool, nor would like to be connected with any football club at all. On the other hand, my stomach has it's own ideas and looks on the world, which often differ from those of mine. This is, of course, to be expected - if I was to be one with my stomach, none of this would exists.

Then who or what exactly is company to my crazy stomach, or IBS if I want to be more official? It's Hypochondria, a condition that is characterized by a belief that physical symptoms are signs of some illness, usually a bad one (probably fatal). While I have to disagree with some of my friends who think that it marks me as a person (very much), there might be some truth in their jokes about me. Namely, from time to time, some physical manifestations on / in my body really do render as something very similar to certain illnesses. Yes, there were periods when I was sure something bad is boiling in me and that I might be facing a rather painful and unpleasant death, but that is long behind me. Some remains still exist, though.

Something else does never walk alone, as well. It's trouble. I'm a big animal lover. From dogs to cats, from cows to horses. You name it, I probably love it. I don't have too much pets though. It's only a male cat, 5 years old, with nice orange fur and a bad temper. A real alpha male in the neighborhood, he recently had some condition with his ears - an inflammation that took him about 7 days to get over it. And when it was gone, something much worse came (hence the never walk alone part): he caught some kind of pathogen fungi that is easily transmittable to humans. My neighbor found a stray cat recently that had that same condition, but was careless enough not to take his animal to a vet. As a result, almost 10 people caught the same fun fungi, which then resulted in my neighborhood looking like Star Trek: Voyager (to be precise, like Nelix the chef ). After all this, my cat has to stay in quarantine for the next 8 days, and I have to disinfect the whole house, and hope for the best not to catch the same thing.

My cat and his fungi probably won't be walking alone.