COLUMN: Don’t Mind the Mess – The much too common cold

I’m not saying I have bad luck, but there are some things in life I can always count on – like taxes, unsolicited advice from strangers, and the undeniable fact that if I have a packed week with important events and lots of people, I will absolutely, without fail, come down with a cold.

We call it the “Common Cold.” It makes sense, really. No one is special enough to avoid it. The cold doesn’t discriminate – it takes down the strong, the weak, the health-conscious, and the junk-food addicts alike. It’s the great equalizer of viruses, a universal rite of passage, like getting your first cavity or realizing too late that you shouldn’t have trusted a sneeze, or the availability of a washroom. Maybe that’s why it’s called “common”- because everyone, at some point, has been its miserable hostage.

It’s like an uninvited guest at your wedding, who spills red wine on your dress. No matter how much vitamin C I take, how often I wash my hands, or how much I avoid the guy in the grocery store hacking into his elbow, the cold always finds me. And it never, ever comes at a good time.

There’s a certain smugness to a cold. It lurks in the shadows, waiting for the absolute worst moment to strike. Maybe you have a big presentation at work. Maybe you’re about to go on vacation. Or maybe, like me last week, you simply uttered the words, “I hardly ever get sick” – which is an open invitation for germs to descend upon you like the flock of pigeons on the bad guys in that Home Alone movie.

At first, it’s subtle. A little tickle in your throat. You tell yourself it’s allergies or maybe just dryness from the weather. You go about your day in blissful denial. But by evening, you’re scrambling for decongestants and wondering if anyone will smell the Vicks fumes at work tomorrow. You can feel your immune system throwing up its hands in surrender while the virus sets up shop in your sinuses.

By day two, you have fully transitioned into a new version of yourself: The Walking Mucus Factory. Your voice has taken on a suspicious resemblance to a 90-year-old lifelong smoker, your nose is both completely stuffed and inexplicably running at the same time, and your head feels like it’s filled with wet cement. Your lips are starting to bubble with cold sores. You begin to wonder if you’ll ever breathe through your nose again or if this is just who you are now.

The remedies are useless against this foe. There’s always someone insisting, “Just take more vitamin C!” as if you haven’t already been downing orange juice like a pirate trying to avoid scurvy. And let’s not forget the classic advice: “Just get some rest!”, because sleeping with a congested nose is about as easy as sleeping while dangling upside down.

Of course, the cold doesn’t just ruin your health – it ruins your dignity. You start carrying around a tissue like it’s now a part of you. You attempt to apply lip balm to your cracked, flaking nose in a desperate attempt to prevent looking like a shedding reptile. You cough so violently in public that people step back in horror, as if you’re single-handedly launching the next pandemic.

Then, just when you resign yourself to a lifetime of nasal misery, something magical happens – you start to feel better. Your sense of smell returns. You no longer sound like you’ve been gargling gravel. You re-enter society, ready to live your best life. And that’s exactly when you’ll hear someone near you say, “I hardly ever get sick!”

And the cycle begins again.