Everyone on my team at work is sick with the gift that keeps on giving, the common cold. None of us are sick enough to go home, we’re just all miserable while we’re here… well, except D. D went to the hospital yesterday for something or other and then thought it was a good idea to show up this morning. I admire his tenacity, but I think he made it a grand total of a half hour before he was on his ass with fatigue.
I’m not even sure he went there because he was sick. If he wasn’t ill when he got there, he certainly would have been walking out. There’s a reason insurance companies don’t want you to stay in the hospital very long. You could walk in with the common cold and walk out with tuberculosis… or whatever else happens to be “on special.”
As for me, I’ll catch anything (except, perhaps, the things that are thrown at me). I must have the weakest immune system on record, because I get sick all the time. The bitch of it is that there’s very little I can do about it… and if I’m going to do something, I generally do it right. I don’t just catch a virus, I’ll manage to get a secondary bacterial infection from my own snot. I’m starting to wonder if I’m just allergic to myself, which is why it’s good that I live in Texas now. My stepmom is a rheumatologist, which means she deals in “allergic to myself” all day long.
Aaaaah-choo! (No, really.)
I’m at lunch right now, but when I go back in the afternoon, it will be more of the same:
type
cough
click a few times
sneeze loudly
everyone will say “bless you.”
I will say thank you
lather
rinse
repeat
Luckily, we’re pretty slow today, so I can spend more time on each case than I normally would. This is good because when I’m not working at 100%, my eyes start to glaze over and I have to read things three times before I actually comprehend them. That is because I have to close my eyes when I sneeze. And then, usually, I have to blow my nose. By then, I’ve forgotten what it was that I was reading.
Who are you people again?
The good thing is that I am stocked at the office with things to ease a cold. I don’t believe in cough drops, because I think anything that creates saliva is good; my candy bowl is filled with sugar free LifeSavers, Jolly Ranchers (which, in my family, are called “Humorous Herdsmen”), and Caramel Apple Werther’s. They’re sugar free so I don’t feel bad for popping them like speed.
And on that note, I’m off. I have to blow my nose…
Again.
Stories That Are All True 