The great blurt-fest of '09 - Part I

I have been sicker than a sick dog since Sunday. Today is the first day I feel vaguely human again.

It all began when I contracted a delightful bug Thursday fortnight ago from one Miss Vomitron, who, yes, as the name suggests, "got me" with a power chuck while trying to tell me she needed a cuddle - no wonder. She was over it in a day, what with being able to sleep it off in four hours' straight sleep during the day first in our bed and then on the couch. Of course, there was no such "luxury" for moi.

So last Friday, I was finally ready to say that the slimy green town, which I was apparently building with my own coughed-up Lego pieces each morning, was complete. Saturday was my day of rest. And then Sunday, it really started. I was hit with some vile, second wave of this super-cold.

It is at this point that I would like to personally thank the world for rushing to the aid of anti-biotics for every little thing. Don't get me wrong - and please don't report me to the Vent police - I do believe they have their place. I'm not an anti-anti-biotic-taker. However.... in clarifying that, I have formed the opinion over the years that they are an ineffective if not useless (if not dangerous) way to clear up symptoms of some of your more typical, everyday - and sure, annoying and uncomfortable - colds and flu's. I swore off them, except in absolutely necessary cases for various things like tooth infections and the likes, years before the LGBB was born. She has had one course of anti-biotic cream in her life, so far, and I'd resort to using them if, again, absolutely necessary. I think I was probably about nineteen or twenty, the last time I went to a doctor who prescribed me something "just 'cos" I'd gone to see them when I was sick. Entirely unnecessary but I did what the doctor ordered back then. I wonder, there must be people who go to the doctors for any little illness and are given prescriptions, when they possibly don't realise there is another alternative (one of which being, hey, just be sick for a few days and wait it out!).

Where am I going with this? Oh yeah. I guess I'm just musing that "the simple cold" isn't so darn simple anymore. I don't know if it's my constitution (which, if it is, must have changed in recent months) but it doesn't just take a few days to get over a cold these days! If I caught a cold, five years ago, I could pretty accurately track its pattern. I'd have a day of feeling like I was coming down with something, the next day dripping nose and eyes, the following day it'd predictably move further into my head and sinuses/ears and so forth, then it'd be on its way out when I could feel myself hacking up the stuff off my lungs (ewwwww.. forgive me the description). Four days, but usually five at most to get rid of a cold.

Not now. Now it's, what, two weeks? And counting? I am probably grossly under-researched, but I do in part blame the use of quick-fix drugs for these new, harder to get rid of bugs and things. See? "Things". That's the official medical term I use because I have no hard evidence.