It's a Doozy - February, 2010

I once heard the renowned scientific researcher Dr. Paul Janssen say, “If a cold goes untreated, it lasts for two weeks. If you take medication, it will be gone in 14 days.”

I’m right there with you, Dr. J.

I am in the throes of what another esteemed medical expert, the late, great Sylvia Gordon, would have categorized officially as “a doozy.” She used to say, “When you get a cold, it is a doozy,” and she was right. There would be tissues all over the place, running nose, tearing eyes, sneezing, coughing, wheezing – and a yen for a Bumble Bee Tuna Fish sandwich that only she could satisfy. Where’s that Dugan man with the white bread?

It started last week with a very sore throat, which I tried to medicate with hot tea, spiced hot chocolate and plenty of orange juice. Dr. Mom, otherwise referred to as my sister, assured me it would be a full-fledged cold by the next day. I hate to admit it, but she was right. (Of course, she also correctly diagnosed my plantar fasciitis AND recommended I get a second opinion – from her foot doctor.) By yesterday the cold was full-blown, and so was my nose after sneezing at least 50 times. I have already dipped into the back-up boxes of tissues (I am as prepared as a Girl Scout) and have taken inventory of the medicine cabinet as I ingest Corricidin, Contact, ColdEeze (pills and lozenges), nasal spray and Mucinex – though, I promise, not all at once.

This is the kind of cold that makes people feel bad for you – and avoid you. One of the big advantages of retirement is that I don‘t have to decide whether to take my snotty body to work and risk feeling worse and infecting everyone else. I can stay home and blow, sniff, cough and make disgusting noises to my heart’s content.

Once I was at a big meeting, where I was new to the group. I knew I was in trouble when I blew my nose and sneezed throughout the 90-minute ride to the meeting site (luckily, I was driving alone and had strategically placed a garbage bag on the gear shift for easy discarding of the tissues I was using in mass quantity). Though I sounded nasal, I tried not to speak (and you can only imagine how torturous that must have been for me) or blow my nose. When the session ended, I retreated to my room and proceeded to blow my nose for 30 minutes straight. I could feel it in my toes. (My mother would have inquired, "Do you have a factory going up there?") When I emerged to go to the dinner, it looked like I had either gone 10 rounds with Mike Tyson or had just lost the love of my life. In either case, people really tried to avoid me, and I couldn’t blame them. I do, however, blame the lack of oxygen getting to my brain that day for a lot of things that have happened since.

Last night I was enjoying some drug-induced sleep when I was awakened by some strange noise. Oh, that’s just me, wheezing, I realized. I blew, coughed, changed positions – and stayed awake for the next two hours, just trying to breathe. I am not yet ready to see the doctor, since I have, in the past, gone too soon, when the bronchial tubes weren’t quite filled up enough to call it bronchitis. Yet by the next day, the cough coming from my body seemed to emanate from the ground floor. I am hoping to stay in the head cold range and miss the bronchitis or pneumonia that can result, and I promise to call the doctor if anything seems to be getting worse. I am going to the gynecologist tomorrow, but I don’t think that will help.

I’m trying to fend off the worst of the symptoms by maintaining an orange diet. I am consuming tea, butternut squash soup, orange juice and oranges. I may emerge from this bout looking like I went to the tanning salon.

Meanwhile, I am fully stocked with drugs, tissues, food, movies and TV shows to watch. And, as I could have predicted, I am having a great hair day!

Don't worry, because I should be fine in another two weeks – or 14 days, at worst.