A Cure for the Common Cold

Hint: There isn't one!

This is how a cold works. Maybe it’s a little different for you but it’s always the same for me. It always amazes me how surprised some people act about colds though and how there are still so many widely believed myths about them. Here to set the record straight, at least from my point of view, is an accounting of the cold I’m getting over right now and every one I’ve every had before.

Day 1: My throat hurts. I try to make excuses for it besides getting sick, like maybe I sang too loud in the car yesterday. By nightfall this excuse is wearing thin.

Day 2: My throat is hurting super bad. I’m wondering if it’s strep this time, because sometimes it is. Start taking mega doses of Vitamin C (anyone remember that song?) and drinking hot tea and chicken bouillon.

Day 3: Throat still hurts, but a whole lot less and now I have a sinus headache, which proves that it’s not strep and the cold will continue per usual. Voice gets hoarse as the day goes on, and I can’t smell anything.

Someone (probably the mother of the person you caught the cold from) says "oh it’s this weather we’re having." It’s not the weather. Weather doesn’t have germs. Weather has nothing to do with it. And besides the “weather we’ve been having” is perfectly ideal chamber of commerce weather. That’s not it. It’s germs, specifically a virus.

Day 4: No one wants me around them. I wake up the house coughing, and there’s a growing pile of Kleenex on the floor near my bed. I’ve probably been throwing up from all the mucus that’s drained down there. TMI, I know.

Someone suggests that it’s probably allergies. It’s not allergies.

Someone else suggests that maybe it’s more than a cold and I should go to a doc in the box. I should not go to a doc in the box. If he was a decent doctor he would say “it’s a cold. Here’s an expectorant to help your body clear out the mucus which is what it’s already trying to do with all the coughing. Drink lots of fluids.” But I’m pregnant and couldn’t take the expectorant anyway and I already know about the fluids thing. Unfortunately, there are a lot of less than decent doctors out there who would say instead “here’s an antibiotic (worthless against a virus which is what a cold is) and a cough suppressant (exactly the opposite of what I need right now).”

Day 5: My cough will continue, drier now, but it has mostly done its job already. It’s always the worst in the morning, but it’ll get better as the day goes on. My nose is chapped, my lips are chapped, my hands are dried out from all the GermX, and I still can’t smell very well. But the good news is the cold is pretty much done! Even though I still sound gross, I’m starting to feel fine. This is where I am today, and that’s pretty good news.