Can You Die From a Cold?

That is my question of the day.   Can you die from a cold?   And my answer today would be yes.   Yes, you can die from a cold.   And how do I know this?   Because I am dying a slow, horrible death from a cold right now.   And there is nothing I hate more in this world than a cold.   I would rather have a broken leg.   With a broken leg, you are clearly incapacitated.   No one expects you to do things like heavy lifting or, like, walking.   But with a cold, there is no mercy.   If there are no visible signs of a physical impalement, the world has no sympathy for you.   You just have to wipe your nose and move on.

To combat this, I wallow in my colds as much as possible.   The bigger my nose gets, the more nasally I sound, the more cough I can produce the better.   THEN people know I’m sick.   Chris says this is psychological and completely unhealthy behavior.   I tell him to shut up and get me more cough syrup.

And speaking of cough syrup, the whole medication part of having a cold is the worst, too.   Every time I get a cold, I go straight to my doctor and demand medicine.   And every time I am told that I just need to ride it out.   “There’s no cure for a cold!” my doctor says with a smile.   I tell him to shut up and get me more cough syrup, too.   The thing about over-the-counter cold pills is that they make me feel worse than my actual cold does.   So, I can either go through my day sleepy and groggy, or I can go through it like a clear-eyed leaky faucet.   Yesterday I chose the cold pills and I fell asleep in the middle of a meeting.   Seriously.   My head bobbed so hard that it jerked me awake.   Immediately after the meeting my boss said maybe I should just go home.   Good idea. I had snotted all over every possible public space in my building.   My work here was done.

The only good thing about a cold, my only highlight during this week of hell, is taking my temperature.   I don’t know what it is, but I love to take my temperature.   I love it.   When I get sick, I curl up in my bed with my tissues and orange juice and my Vick’s thermometer and I just take my temperature all day.   Naturally, I blame my parents for this obsession.   When I was little, I was not allowed to stay home from school unless I was running a temperature.   Only then did my parents believe that I might actually be sick.   So even today, I don’t feel truly justified to be home, moaning about my runny nose, unless I have a temperature.

Today before I left my office, I was sitting at my desk, staring into space in a Robitussin induced haze, when a florist knocked on my door.   He had the sweetest fall bouquet of flowers for me!   I tore open the card and it said, “I hope you feel better.   Love you.   Chris.”   Now, if that doesn’t make him Husband of the Year, or at least Husband of the Day, then I don’t know what does.   Random flowers are the best flowers!   And if I could have smelled, I bet they would have smelled great.   Instead, I sneezed on them and went home early.

I love him.   And my thermometer.