Nothing like OTC medicine for a cold … or whatever ails you

The instant the student leaned over my desk for help with a math problem, I knew I was going to be sick. That much contamination right in my face sealed my fate. I was going to get a cold and a nasty one at that.

True to form, within days my body succombed to sneezing, coughing, aches and pains. I felt miserable. Foggy-brained, tired, not really wanting to get up and get going.

Having a cold left me muddleheaded – as always.

It happens every time. I stumble around only half aware of the world around me. The dishes pile up in the sink, the floor goes unswept, unnoticed as I go into survival mode.

With every cold, I have to decide whether to take medicine and suffer the side effects of feeling disconnected from the world and ready for a long nap, to stumble around as if I just left a merry-go-round as I fly high as the chemicals subduing the symptoms of the cold do their work. Or, I can take a prescription of Kleenex everywhere I go and try to capture every sneeze or cough.

For the cold from my student, I added the lack of sleep that welcomed me in the morning after grading papers late into the night and a bit of exasperation with life in general. In other words, I could have cared less about much of anything.

I felt miserable, too miserable to think about anything except relief. If I could take enough pills, maybe I could escape my misery.

I yanked open the drawer of medicines in the bathroom and looked at my options with eyes watering from the cold.

Something to stop the sinus flow. I grabbed a blister pack, released a couple of pills, tossed them back with a glass of water and did what I absolutely had to do to leave the house on time for another day in the classroom.

I expected the runny nose and watery eyes to cease and desist by the time I started my first class of the day, Algebra.

Time flew as I checked attendance and homework, presented the lesson for the day, explained the steps a second time, assigned homework and kept the Kleenex box handy.

By the time General Math had finished, I resigned myself to a day of sneezes in the face of the ineptitude of modern medicine to fix, let alone cure, the common cold.

After seven hours of classes, I stumbled home, befuddled that the medicine had not dried my sinus cavities.

I dropped my books and papers on the table and slumped on the bed, too tired to care, let alone think.

I went to the bathroom to wash my face. I glanced at the medicine options again deciding there was no use taking another pill. The first had not helped. I saw one package for congestion, another for sneezes, another for …wait a minute. That blister pack came with a picture of a cat and directions for de-worming the cat.

And that was the pill I had taken earlier that day.

I shoved the drawer shut and shook my head.

I did not take any more medicine. I saw no reason to take medicine. The pills I had taken that morning had done absolutely nothing for my cold.

So convinced that medication would not help, I sneezed and blew my way through another day or two of school, before I surfaced long enough out of my sodden brain to realize that of course. I still sneezed. I had not taken a cold medicine. I had popped the cat’s de-worming pill.

That pill never would fix a cold … I needed to take a cold tablet not a cat’s pill for worms.

I picked up the other options, read the labels and took a decongestant. It was amazing how much better I felt within the hour.

(Joan Hershberger is a staff writer for the News-Times. Email her at joanh@everybody.org)


Posted

in

by

Tags: