Sick of being sick

So there I was, confident and cocky that I would make it through the winter season without getting an illness that was more than a 24-hour stomach bug. I was bragging to people that I was healthy this winter since I quit smoking. I laughed at the face of sniffles and sneezes and coughs. "Ah-hahahahaha!!" I'd bellow, "You shall not make a sick man out of me, oh you hoary hosts of viruses and germs!!" When I made this speech aloud, I 'd get weird looks at the grocery store, but I would just shrug them off and smile, knowingly, that I was protected this year from sickness!

Then suddenly by the middle of February, all around me people were getting this horrible cold. My trusty employee started to hack and cough and then called out sick for 6 days! I also found out that my old friend Karen was hacking and wheezing her way through work for over a week. (I successfully avoided contact with her!) Then come poker night, my good friend Dave was sniffling and hacking his lungs out while he was in my car! Almost a week passed and I thought I was safe, dare I thought nigh-invulnerable to this dreaded disease.

And then Thursday night came....

At first it seemed like I had a small head cold. "No biggie!" I thought to myself, a little sinus pressure but no coughing. "I can handle this with some antihistamines!" I swallowed a few Tylenol PM's and when I awoke Friday morning, my eye was glued shut with eye boogers. Having been through this experience before, I knew immediately what it was. I had pink eye a.k.a. conjunctivitis. It feels like your eyelid is made of sand paper and your eyes are constantly seeping with goop. The first time I got it I was visiting my friend Mike at his college at Rutgers University in my early 20's. I recall screaming across a study hall to his roommate to see if he had any Visine. It must have appeared that I was huge stoner for yelling that. (well, I was, but I wasn't stoned when I asked.) Needless to say, pink eye is a rather uncomfortable experience.

Then Friday night I started to get a low grade fever that continued all weekend and my head cold made me feel even worse. My sinus pressure is awful and I even resorted to using those kooky sinus rinses where you squirt a solution up one nostril and it comes out the other nostril. I feel tired and somewhat achy but I haven't started coughing yet. I know the hacking and wheezing will eventually come. I have resigned myself to the cold Gods and will soon sacrifice a lamb to appease their anger at me for being so bold. I can only pray that my cold ends soon or that my death will be a quick and painless event.