It used to be that every October, I would get a cold. It was like clockwork. Sometimes it was the only time I got sick. Sometimes, the littles in my family gave me a few more over the year. (I actively decided a long time ago that spending time with my littles was worth a cold now and then.)
Then COVID happened, and I didn’t get anything because I wasn’t around anyone. Or anywhere, for that matter. It was nice.
This year, it feels like my clockwork clock is missing a few gears.
I’ve had three colds in eight weeks. And when I say cold, I don’t mean a couple of miserable days. Because my conditions have compromised my immune system, my colds always last two or three weeks. Starts with a dry throat. You know, it’s a little sharp high at the back. By the time I wake up the next day, I have a boulder lodged down low and I can no longer breathe through my nose. Sometimes I cough so hard my ribs hurt for days.
There is never a fever. (A fever is how I know it’s the flu and not a cold.)
For a week or so, I dope myself up on over-the-counter cough medicine and decongestants, which may or may not work. I dig my sick day pillow out of my closet so I can sleep on an incline and I only move to go from sick day station to sick night station. That would be the bed with piles of meds and diabetes equipment, water, lozenges, juice, phone, computer, and the remote to the couch with the same plus blankets. And it works, at least until I wake up in a weird position flat on my back and with a crick in my neck.
The cough is usually the last to go, even after my energy levels recover. The best part is when my voice drops an octave or two and I end up sounding like Barry White for that last week even though everything else has gotten better.
But the thing about that is, after a couple years in lockdown, my natural immunity gained through exposure has gotten lazy. It needs to be re-trained, and going out and about maskless, even as rarely as I do, is like sending my immune system to the gym. Unless I feel a cold coming on or am going to be somewhere with large crowds. Then it’s all mask all the time, no matter how my lungs complain (my asthma hates masks.).
There is also that period of time when I have recovered but my immune system is still weak because all of the energy it expended to fix me, all while it subsisted on clear liquids and applesauce.
I guess this year was just the perfect viral rhinitis storm.
I would really like to be done with all that now. I feel like I have paid my annual regular-person-illness dues for the season. So, to any of the universe’s entities out there who might be listening, could you give a girl a break?