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Sickness

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Image from Pixabay“Suggested remedy for the common cold: A good gulp of whiskey at bedtime – it’s not very scientific, but it helps.”

Alexander Fleming

Bah!

I seem to have acquired a mild but most annoying instance of the common cold.

I say again – Bah!

I write this not to elicit sympathy (though I will naturally not spurn such if offered!) for ’tis but a mild malady and will not last long. I really only mention it because this is the first cold that I have had since moving to Canada more than a year hence. Last winter came and went with not a hint of either a cough or a sniffle.

Such benefits clearly come in part from living in such a healthy environment but I have little doubt that this benediction also emanates from my retirement from a lengthy career in education. For as long as I can recall I have suffered two or three colds a year, one such usually being contracted a couple of weeks subsequent to the start of each term. There is an obvious boon in no longer being forced into extended proximity to a host of germ-laden youngsters!

In any case another consideration must now be borne in mind. The Girl’s new(ish) job brings her into regular and frequent contact with elderly folk. It is clearly imperative that she doesn’t catch anything that might be passed on, so if I do get an attack of the sniffles extra precautions must be taken.

Of course, should that mean taking the occasional additional ‘wee dram’ you would not hear me complaining!

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Photo by Andy Dawson ReidIs there any torment quite so loathsome as the misery engendered by the common cold?!

The question is – naturally – rhetorical by nature, so please do not furnish me with lists of your own (or others!) alternate afflictions. I am still suffering the agonies of my own particularly virulent strain of the aforementioned and thus not in the mood to accommodate those either soliciting sympathy or offering outrage.

Sorry!

There is a point – when struck by the first prickle in the throat and the first uncontrollable urge to cough at an inappropriate moment – that one raises one’s eyes to the heavens and prays silently to Asclepius that, on this occasion, one might be spared anything worse. There are times when this prayer is heard and answered. There are others when it is not.

Once the tickle in the throat turns to a stabbing pain when swallowing – or to an acuate agony on sneezing – all is lost. The next trial comes at night when, waking abruptly, one finds oneself unable to breathe and apparently incapable of containing the contents of one’s nasal cavities. Not long then until the sinuses fill and the excruciating sensation of having a steel band slowly tightened around one’s head and face takes the mind off lesser evils. It is at this point that one recognises that standard ‘girly’ tissues are simply not up to the job and it is time to trek to the store to stock up on the ‘man-sized’ equivalent.

This stage of the painful process can last for days, during which the constant need to minister to throat and sinuses leaves one’s body racked and exhausted, and the constant ingestion of an assortment of pills and potions plays havoc with one’s gastrointestinal tract. Then – if one is singularly unlucky, and just as the symptoms seem set to ease a little – the cold moves onto the chest! The tightening of the ribcage is at first accompanied by that dreadful, dry, hacking cough – the body’s reflex to expel something that apparently does not exist. Later on it will do so, of course, and one then finds oneself aghast that one’s organs could ever have contained such vile material…

Quite enough of that – I think…!

The true agony is not – however – physical at all. It arises from the realisation that – when all is said and done – one is not really ill… one merely has a cold! As a result (and with apologies to those of you who are bringing up small children and can thus not do so at any point) one can’t actually sanction ‘throwing a sickie’…

Shame!

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