Cold

Forgive the brevity (cough, wheeeeze, blow nose repeatedly) of this post. And the typos (sneeze, sneeze, cough, blow nose).  And the total lack of any literary merit (cough again, search for new box of tissues, blow nose, blow nose, blow nose).

Time and space distort wildly (sneeze) with a cold.  The head expands to many times its normal size.  The sinuses alone become a labyrinthine maze, awesome in their hugeness and beset with painful pressure changes.  A night can last for an eternity and the physical becomes all-encompassing.  Breathing alone requires a herculean effort and endless small, painful adjustments.

I bless and comfort the body, offer it endless drinks of peppermint tea, honey and lemon and cold, clear water and thank it for the monumental effort it makes to expel the invading army.  I refuse to take tablets to lower my temperature, knowing my body is doing its best to roast the virus causing my discomfort.

I ask why, this once, my body has accepted the virus, given that despite frequently being exposed to colds, I haven’t had one in years.  My body replies that it needed time to shut down, to be left alone and to allow assimilation of all that is going on around it. ‘A bit of breathing space,’ it says and I give a hollow laugh (cough, sneeze) – if only.

And so (cough, cough, COUGH, wheeze, wheeze)  I will accept its wisdom and crawl back to the sofa with yet another box of tissues and another peppermint tea… and hope that assimilation happens soon, whenever ‘soon’ may be.