Being Sick at Christmas Is A Total Bummer. Eh, Whatever.

I have a cold.  I haven’t been sick since the dawn of the dinosaurs.  It seems.  I’M NOT REALLY THAT OLD BE QUIET

It’s been a slow burn, this sick.  It started the week of Thanksgiving with an innocent dry cough that would come and go with no warning, belligerent in its effect on a quiet moment but quickly forgotten.

Then, as soon as I remembered that it went away, it came back as a sinus and chest congestion combo that took turns with symptoms: today, a headache.  Tomorrow, a wicked rumbling cough.  The next day, a few sniffles and sneezes.

Many people in our area have had this particular brand of sickness recently.  Everyone has the same story.  It hangs on for a month.  I am well within this time frame.  I hate myself for being so common. It seems I am not above the law of seasonal cold-catching, even though I haven’t been sick in recent years and isn’t it something – I got a flu shot this year for the first time in a long time and I got sick.  Let’s not dwell on this.

The arrival of this illness in dribs and drabs has served only to slow me down, not lay me out entirely.  It is Christmas, after all.  No time to be under the weather.  Jesus’ birthday waits for no one, especially one with a wittle cold.  So I try, haphazardly, to fight it.

I guzzled the expired cough syrup languishing in the back of our medicine cupboard to get relief from the hacking.  Leftover cough-and-cold medicine that one of the kids took at the beginning of the school year soothed my occasional headache.  I finally gave in and bought some heavy-duty congestion pills to loosen up the crunk that I imagine enrobes the soft parts of my chest cavity. 

They are all gone.  I am still sick.  Sort of.

Please enjoy this picture of my used tissues and cold cup of coffee.
Yup.  Those are actual used tissues.
Little known effect of having a cold?  Apathy.

I drink fluids, wash my hands, and repeat.  I blow my nose, suck on cough drops, lie on the couch and turn on the TV.  Don’t we fight colds when we rest?  The DVR is clear.

Luckily the internet is here to save the day for the Christmas shopping that would certainly be neglected if it was 2007.  I have only the energy to get a little excited that most of the purchases I’ve made are shipped for free.  I grab a wad of tissues and sit on the floor in my room with the wrapping supplies left over from last year and cut and fold paper to hide the items that just minutes before were delivered to our front porch.

It’s all that can be done until this sick is gone.  The bare minimum.  The schedule looms, threatening to overwhelm with the many huge things that we have going on.  I pick one and say no.  Another is cancelled.  The rest are holding fast to their positions, like soldiers on the winning side in a war zone or that last five pounds of baby weight you still haven’t lost even as your children are careening toward the high school years.  My house is dirty, and will be dirtier next week when my family visits.  Eh, maybe they won’t notice that the toilets haven’t been scrubbed in weeks.

Being sick has infected me with indifference.

My head feels like it’s filling up again.  I pop another cold pill, heat up some water for tea, lie down, and figure out what to cook for dinner tonight.  Maybe the cookies won’t get baked this year.  I figure I’m a week behind in my Christmas preparations.  I don’t even care.  Will the kids notice if they don’t have stockings this year?  Hoping to be free of this cold soon, I send out telepathic messages to the universe.

Send cookies.

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