Tonsillitis, sinusitis…. Marv and I are Mr. and Mrs. Itis right now. He’s almost completely lost his voice and my head feels as if it’s in a vise. Now Stephen seems a bit is feverish today about four days after Marv first got sick.

Since moving to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam almost two years ago, we’ve gotten sick more often than in any other place. Aside from colds and sinus trouble, I’ve had weeks when I’d wake up in the mornings wheezing. None of us have felt all that healthy here.

I blame it on the polluted air, both indoors and out. Indoors, we’re always in air-conditioned rooms because of the perpetually warm weather; the air is pulled in from the outside, shunted through the walls where any manner of mold could be growing, then is blasted out of the air conditioners which are maintained regularly but far from new. Outdoors, the dust, exhaust fumes, and persistent smog of a city in a developing country doesn’t make the air any more pleasant. There’s no truly fresh air anywhere you go within Saigon.

Living here has not been as difficult as we’d expected and we’ve got nothing to whine about compared to many of the locals who will spend their entire lives in Vietnam. But I can’t forget that both SARS and avian influenza (this time around) were first reported in Vietnam.