The Cold Experience

There was a time when I would get sick, take the recommended dosage of Dayquil/Nyquil, eat a really dumb sandwich, and function well enough soon after. When you look at the universal cold medicines of the US, which usually are supposed to treat 9001 symptoms, it made sense to use them as when I’d get sick it would always seem to be some combination of things they covered.

Colds just aren’t colds for me anymore. Now something comes at me suddenly, hits me like a truck, and then combos into some other symptom. When you feel your body go from not-fever to fever over the course of two minutes your first though is “oh well I guess maybe I’m dying” and reach for some ibuprofen hoping to stave off the reaper one more night. It’s not over yet, though. Oh, no.

Each day the wheel spins, and as yesterday’s symptom fades we get to see what today’s episode’s sudden onset villain is going to be. This repeats for several days, becoming a spiral of self diagnosis and medicinal desperation. Going to a doctor for this seems silly, as the inconsistent symptoms are consistent with pretty much every damn thing.

This gets annoying with work, where I might go home with a stomach ache and then get messages like “so how’s your stomach?” I’m really bad at lying, but trying to explain my progressions of disease sound like fantasy. “Well, that’s fine now, but now I’ve got a <SPIN THE WHEEL>.” While true, it doesn’t make for a great narrative.

So I guess this is just how it is for me now.