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This week: Sick Edited by: Robert Waltz  
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"I had thought - I had been told - that a 'funny' thing is a thing of a goodness. It isn't. Not ever is it funny to the person it happens to. Like that sheriff without his pants. The goodness is in the laughing itself. I grok it is a bravery... and a sharing... against pain and sorrow and defeat."
- Valentine Michael Smith
(Robert Heinlein,
Stranger in a Strange Land) |
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Sick
I'm sick.
(CHORUS: "We know that, Waltz!")
No, I mean I have a cold.
Apparently, my colds are different from everyone else's colds. For one thing, I usually only get them in the spring and summer, while everyone else gets them in the fall or winter. Also, I don't get the bug that often (one of the many advantages of having no children), but when I do, you'd think I had lupus from how useful I am: lying in bed and moaning every time I have to move.
(CHORUS: "It's never lupus!")
Thank you, Dr. House.
The thing is, I can deal with the sore throat, even at those early stages when it feels like you're swallowing sandpaper. I can handle the headache; it's not that bad, really, and analgesics help. I can even put up with the cough, though obviously I'd rather not.
So what sends me into a virulent pit of despair every time I have a cold?
Mucus.
Apparently, I produce more mucus than the average person. I see other people, they have a cold, maybe they go through half a box of tissues, maybe a little more, and they're done.
Not me.
Usually, when one of these things start, I don't even have tissues on hand, and so I have to make do with toilet paper, which is soft enough for places where toilet paper is supposed to touch, but like emery board for noses. And then, being sick, I don't want to go out in public to buy my half-dozen boxes of aloe-infused tissues, so I wait until the base of my nose is worn down to the endodermis and scabbing over before thinking about getting some tissues.
This time, I was lucky: I had half a box of tissues in the house when this thing started.
Two hours later, I was at the grocery store, my head tilted back, my eyes squinting (I've found this keeps snot from running out my nose like water from a faucet for a good two, three minutes), and stocking up on tissue paper and other essentials.
Which would be fine, except the clerks are told to say hi to the customers at this one grocery store.
Stock clerk: "Hello, sir - how are you doing today?"
What I want to say: "Holding back a river of snot; how are you?"
What I actually say: "Pretty good." And then I pull a tissue out of my pocket and surreptitiously blow my nose well away from the fresh vegetable area. Usually, if I can be in the diaper area when I do this, I feel better about it, since when I get a cold, it's usually because I was hanging out with someone with children, and it's my little act of revenge.
So anyway, I finally get to the checkout line, a pile of boxes of Puffs Plus threatening to spill over out of my cart. I've been trying really hard not to get infectious snot all over everything, but when your nose is making like Niagara Falls, it's hard to keep people from going over it in a barrel. Or something like that.
Cashier: "Hello, sir - how are you today?"
Me: "Jubst feide, dankoo." (Sniff, cough, hork)
Cashier: "Great!"
(CHORUS: "But why don't you just take antihistamines like a normal person?")
Because I'm not a normal person, and to prove it, I give you Exhibit A:
My snot production when not taking antihistamines:
*******************************************************************
My snot production when taking antihistamines:
*******************************************************************
They don't work. The best I can do is take one of those nighttime medications which don't dam the flood, but at least let me sleep - at least until I wake up at 3 am in a pool of cold snot.
If you think that's gross, reading that, try doing it.
As of this writing, I've filled up a kitchen wastebasket with used tissues, schlepped that out to the trash for pickup (moaning all the way), and now I have another full wastebasket.
I've been going to the gym more often lately, but when I got sick I took a few days off. I weighed myself just before I got sick. I've been eating healthy-normal, even though I was sick (snot-flavored food is so tasty) and not exercising. And then I weighed myself today.
I've lost four pounds.
In three days.
Lest anyone thing I'm exaggerating the amount of snot I produce: Four. Frakking. Pounds.
Snot fair, but hey, at least I'm meeting my weight loss goals - and all I had to do was lie in bed!
...in a puddle of snot. |
In sickness and in humor:
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Comedy: May 04, 2011 Issue [#4372]
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