COLD SEASON
Call it cold season, call it flu season. I don’t care either way because I call it hell. The world is buried in snow and everyone is doing their best to gear up for the festive season, but it still feels like hell. Cold season makes sense because when I checked the temperature I was more interested in what the weather felt like, than what the thermometer actually said. Flu season makes sense too though because right now, my entire face is a chimney whose sole purpose seems to be to expel the fiery wastes that have settled into my torso.
I woke up the other day and it felt like my chest was full of hot cement. When I coughed, the cement exploded and it felt like somebody had held a bat of fibreglass insulation over my face while I slept and now all those microscopic shards of glass were dancing a Christmas jig over my bronchioles.
My sinuses are packed with crud, solid to the point where it feels like my head is full of porridge and I’m listening to everyone around me whine from somewhere within a cold body of water. The odd pop of release creates a weird whistling through my head.
It was at its worst a couple days ago when I was trudging myself into work despite my better judgement. My tracks provided a perfect route to follow home through the swirling eddies of snow but I was determined to get to the office and make it through another day. My nose was dribbling like a leaky faucet and I was running out of soft sections on my mittens to wipe it with. I was also cycling through a random pattern of fevered and frigid.
When I finally arrived at the office I was winded from my the thickness of insulation filled lungs and the additional effort I had expelled climbing through precarious piles of snow and trying not to slip under passing cars. I bent down to untie my boots and a violent sneeze rocked through me at the same time that I coughed up a mouthful of lung debris.
I blew my nose and there was so much output that it covered my entire jaw line rendering the single meagre tissue useless. I cleaned up the mess and blew again and the left over bits wound up coming out of my eyes as well; actually spraying out mist onto my still foggy eyeglasses.
I realized then that I probably should have stayed home, but looking around the office at the other crusty, red nosed cubicle dwellers, I realized that none of us should be here. I wasn’t a trooper, I was just one of the many trying to hack, blow and wipe my way through another introductory round of cold season.
We work in a sterile environment that is mostly devoid of individual personalities. Today though, it is anything but sterile. Hacking, chest shaker coughs echo through the office and elephant-like trumpet blasts of wet mucosal discharge punctuate conversations. Sniffs and sneezes and soft, sullen groans surround us all.
In the break room, I gaze out the window at the wintry wonderland. It really is beautiful, the world sheathed in soft white comforters. It makes me wish again that I had stayed in bed, a glass of warm ginger ale and a steaming cup of instant chicken soup by my side.
I swallow, a painful effort with the current state of my throat. I had a hot toddy last night in an attempt to clear things up, and today it feels like I was drinking shots of glass shards.
I return to my desk with a fresh box of Kleenex from the supply room. After two sloppy sneezes that despite my best efforts, still eave rainbow speckles on my computer monitor, I resign myself to another day of productivity. With a sniff I wipe the screen.
Welcome to cold season.
No comments:
Post a Comment