The myth of 98.6

98.6 is not normal body temperature! I don’t care if your mom and your school nurse told you it was. 98.6 is the average body temperature measured with a mercury armpit thermometer in the later 1800’s, and it is just that an average! (Plus when was the last time someone measured your armpit temperature?) The normal range for people is from 96 to 99 and varies from person to person and cycles during the day. My normal body temp is 97.1 but since my school nurse thought you had to at least hit 99 to be sick, and most of the time I couldn’t even hit 98.6 I had a hard time convincing her I was sick. By her standards the barely perceptible change of 0.4 degrees was worse than the 1.5 degree change I had. That is why I don’t take my temperature when I am sick cause I rarely have a “fever”.

Also the only accurate way to measure temperature is with a rectal thermometer since that is as close to the core temp as you can get without things turning seriously unpleasant. All the other thermometers are inaccurate because the surface they measure is air or liquid cooled, and being sick so you are mouth breathing compounds the problem since your mouth is strongly cooled. That inner ear temp gauge is a crock; one of the functions of the ear is as a radiator for the brain, so its blood supply is controlled by the core temp, so if you are cold you ear temp drops as blood is cut off and the ear drum isn’t that deep in you skull that it is insulated from the external temp. Forehead and temple are external and radiant surfaces as well, so their temp is not well correlated with core temp. Actually measuring the temp in the armpit if it was allowed to stabilize isn’t that bad of an idea, since a closed armpit would quickly reach core temp given the large amounts of blood passing by and the large muscle groups.
Oh well my 98.7 degree self must get back to my fake hot and cold spells since I clearly don’t have a fever.