Recently, my husband came down with some nasty variety of an upper respiratory infection.  Let’s call it the common cold, for lack of a doctor’s diagnosis.

He began with a three-day sore throat, sneezing, blowing the nose then hacking, coughing, and additional sneezing.  You need to understand about my husband and sneezing…it’s like he could probably take first place in The Guinness Book of World Records “for the loudest, most consecutive number of sneezes and body jolting delivery of each.”  (I’ve seen the hair stand up on our cat’s back when Ken goes into one of these attacks.)

Judging from all his symptoms, in addition to the totally stuffed up, but, yet, somehow, runny nose, I knew I was going to want a divorce within the week.  Certainly I didn’t want to get what he had.  So, I spent four days, feverishly running around behind Ken with a can of Lysol, spraying everything he touched.  He picked up the coffee pot, I sprayed the handle.  He opened the back door; I sprayed the knob, inside and out.  I doused the phone after every call he made.  Since he never puts the seat down on the potty, I was spraying it more often than I care to tell ya.  Then he'd pet the cat on the head.  I think that's where I made my big mistake.  I didn't spray the cat.  (The cat would disagree.)  After the "germ factory" had run his hand down Cookie’s back, I gave the kitty some lovin'.

Guess who got sick after that?  I’ll tell ya ~ it wasn’t the cat.

The very next day I bonded closely with the couch, TV, and an entire box of tissues…drank enough liquids to keep me afloat.  I may have OD'd on nasal spray, but the advertised “12 Hour Relief” product simply didn’t hold true to its claim.  Have to be careful, though…those inhalers can be the real boogers and create a dependency…like if ya want to breathe.  One small consolation was hearing that it wasn’t just MY NOSE.  Hubby, also, was still having trouble bringing air into his nasal passages.  How sympathetic could I be, knowing that what I’d contracted came from him?

As ill as I was, I admit to having an affair!  And it wasn’t a one-night stand.  It was for the next several nights with NyQuil.  And, yes, it was good for me.  

I considered calling the doctor.  Problem was, past encounters with this sort of ailment taught me my doctor doesn’t believe in prescribing antibiotics unless you need them.  (I don’t quite understand how it is you don’t need them when you’re ready to hire a hit man and the contract’s on your own life.)  But this non-medication philosophy has something to do with “what kind” of malady you have.  If you have a viral infection the antibiotics won’t knock it.  It has to be bacterial.  The symptoms are all pretty much the same ~ miserable.

Isn’t it just amazing how we can put men on the moon, surgically replace a human cornea, liver, kidney, even a heart, but we can’t, Aaachoo (“Bless me.”) come up with a cure for the common cold?  I’m beginning to think a permanent fix would put too many companies out of business and possibly have a devastating, adverse effect on everything in our economy.  Think about the vast number of businesses and entire industries a cure for the common cold could impact.  If I were to just name a few: the manufacturers of vitamins and remedies, pharmaceutical companies that make these and prescription drugs, practitioners who prescribe them, insurance companies that are supposed to pay, commercial advertisements via TV, newspaper, mailers and the Internet.  The shelf life of over the counter drug medications would expire and eventually die like the victim of a cold if I had my way.  Aaachoo.  Sorry.

Okay, I’m getting off my soapbox and back to the tissue box to:

Blow, blow, blow my nose
Gently as it streams.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
Of a cure, you bet, I’ll dream.

Originally published in the March 2012 issue of The Cross Timbers Gazette.