Are you suffering from March Madness disease? If this dramatization of last week seems a little too realistic, you might be.

Thursday, 9:20 a.m. — You were supposed to be at work an hour ago, but you’ve called in sick with a “stomach bug.” The opening game of the tournament, Holy Cross vs. Marquette, tips off. From now until Monday, all calls and e-mails will go unanswered.

9:25 a.m. — Cal vs. North Carolina State tips off. You clutch your brackets tightly and break out in a cold sweat, hoping the coin flip that decided your pick for this 8-9 matchup was enough.

9:40 a.m — Cincinnati vs. Gonzaga starts. You are now tracking three games simultaneously and you’re getting lightheaded.

9:45 a.m. — Returning to the couch with a bowl of Lucky Charms and starting to feel a little better, you look over your brackets for the tenth time, and for the tenth time, nothing has changed. All three games are still going your way, but the psychological effects of March Madness are beginning to set in.

11:40 a.m. — Connecticut vs. Brigham Young is the first of the afternoon games. You curse the selection committee for forcing BYU to play on Sunday if they advance to the Sweet 16, which is against their religious beliefs. This could effectively destroy the brackets and foul up the office pool. You’ve picked UConn and are hoping for the best. As if anxiety wasn’t high enough at this point, Cal and NC State have gone to overtime.

4:30 p.m. — Arizona State-Memphis, Central Michigan-Creighton and San Diego-Stanford are among the next set of games to keep track of. Somehow, you’ve found time for a shower. You’ve got to keep up your strength, and no one can live on Lucky Charms, so you’ve heated up some Hot Pockets.

7:30 p.m. — The nightcaps are Duke vs. Colorado State and Kansas vs. Utah State. Both of those games go the way you want. Cal pulled out the win, and there were no major upsets. After the first day of the tournament, you’re in pretty good shape. You’ve had a long day, and you start to feel like you’re rounding the corner on this illness.

After watching highlights on SportsCenter — twice — you call it a night. It’s a good thing, too, because the next day you wake up feeling the same way you did the day before. You call in sick again on Friday, and the day is almost a carbon copy of the day before. You’ve got a particularly bad case of March Madness disease.

Day two of the tournament doesn’t go as well as the first. Two of your sleeper picks go down, and two more of your upset hopefuls lose as well. The cold, harsh reality of March Madness disease is becoming more obvious: You’re going to need some help if you’re going to win the money… err, bracket pool.

With the start of Saturday’s games, the tournament field is trimmed from 64 to 32. The realization that it’s half over brings a tinge of sadness to the day, but you get over it as soon as Illinois-Notre Dame starts.

This game could get you back into the pool — it’s time to get serious.

Your new resolve couldn’t have come a second sooner. Your comeback game didn’t go your way, and you lost another sleeper pick in a heartbreaker. To top it all off, your team — the one you root for above all others — almost gets knocked out in a double overtime slobberknocker.

If you hadn’t kept yourself sharp with video games on your laptop and steady doses of alcohol, March Madness would surely have gotten the best of you here.

Going into Sunday, you’re not out of the pool, but you’re on life support. You need your buddies to take some serious hits if you’re going to have a chance. Halfway through the day some things have gone in your favor, but others haven’t.

Resigned to the fact that your office pool fate is out of your hands, you let your mind wander to things like classes on Monday, how you’re going to explain your miraculous recovery to your boss, and the family that hasn’t seen or heard from you in four days.

By the end of the day, you’ve snapped out of your basketball haze, and like it or not, you’ve started getting back to normal. Then you remember the Sweet 16 starts next week, and that “stomach bug” is rearing its ugly head again.

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