LIVING WITH A BAD COLD

LIVING WITH A BAD COLD

Cough, cough. I'm 10 days into a bad cold and counting.

"Nothin's gonna happen." Cough. "Nothin's gonna change." Sneeze. "It's sooo hard, it’s sooo hard." These are lines from an old Harry Nilsson song and they apply to me this miserable day, in spades.

Here’s something I taught my kids when they were growing up, "No one cares about your troubles, so keep them to yourself." I told them, “If someone asks how you feel, you say, ‘Great!’ because no one likes a Sorrowful Jones.” It's darn good advice unless the shoe's on the other foot.

It’s strange how feeling poorly affects your view of the world…and yourself. Nothing is appealing, nothing is exciting; there's no romance left in life and there's no prospect of things getting better.

Friends don't call--who wants to listen to the bullfrog croak of a sicky? And my wife, although sympathetic, keeps a polite distance, like I have the plague --which may not be far off the mark.

Truth is, I'm feeling down and blue and my patience with being down and blue is wearing thin. There's a stack of books waiting to be read but I'm not interested. I cannot abide TV under the best of circumstances. The yard needs raking but I fear that would do me in; I’d cough myself into orbit.

So what's left? Take your pick: concentrate on when the next cough is coming or worry about the bulging roll around my middle.

My wife tells me not to despair, that I'll get better. It's easy for her to say, right? She says to remember how good I felt just two weeks ago. Hey, I don't want to hear that. That was then and now is now. I want her to get down and wallow in misery with me.

Contrasted to me, my wife has amazing recuperative powers. When she gets a cold, she merely curls up on the sofa like a cat and gives instructions for me to leave her alone. Then, in two days, max, she's her old chipper self again.

Now I ask you, is that fair? That's not even time enough to sink into despair and contemplate suicide.

Today, I decided that I couldn't wait it out any longer and went to a doc in the box. He gave me a cortisone shot with a needle the size of a 10-penny nail, and prescribed a five-day regimen of super-strong antibiotics.

Antibiotics make me jittery as a long-tail cat and they make me flush. But if it's a choice between cough and flush, I'll try flush for a week.

To conclude this lamentation, my wife just came into the room and, taking one look at my face, cried, "My Lord, you're red as a lobster."

Nilsson was right, "It's sooo hard."