COLUMN: Got the sniffles? Stay in bed!
It starts to happen this time of year. The temperature drops, the stress of classes and social obligations start to creep in and you suddenly find yourself getting less and less sleep, skipping more meals, and when you do eat, it’s nothing to be proud of.
Then Jack Frost comes around and with a swift kick in the pants – he has you down for the count. You officially have a cold.
I know for me, a cold is the beginning of the end. Unlike the more serious illnesses like strep throat or something like that, a cold isn’t something you can beat with antibiotics or trips to the doctor. You just simply have to go to bed, drink orange juice, sip warm soup and sneeze, cough and shiver until your body decides enough is enough and evacuates the virus.
Colds are the mosquitoes of the disease world.
The problem I find most irritating with a cold is that if I had time to sit at home and sleep, eat right and just relax, I probably wouldn’t have gotten this cold in the first place. But now that I have it, it will be a good two weeks before I feel like doing anything important or relevant to life again.
Of course, I still will. I’ll go to work and class and my required social events because to me, colds are not a disease. They are a nuisance, and like all good workaholics, I have been taught to suck it up, which basically means believe you are invincible and pretend you are not suddenly feeling like chopping off your own nose.
Thanks to me and all the other suck-it-up people out there, the rest of you will probably get sick too. Call it a genetic misfortune; we workaholics are bad at delegating but good at sharing, but only when it comes to germs.
But I have good news. Thanks to the help of my roommates, and the fact that I have really felt lousy this last week, I have been turning over a new leaf.
Last Saturday, I stayed in my pajamas all day and did nothing but sit on my couch reading. Yesterday, I stayed home from work and school, something I loath entirely, but had to be done in order to accomplish the task at hand: get better.
I know you’re out there, you people just like me, who, while you were reading this column started thinking, “She must be following me. This sounds just like me.” But, you didn’t have time to finish the thought because you started sneezing and coughing into your sleeve. Then you tossed the paper onto the couch or the table, where 17 other people will handle it, therefore picking up those coughing, sneezing germs and spreading them on to everyone they come in contact with.
As I have been told countless times throughout the last couple weeks, it’s okay to relax. It’s okay to sleep all day. It’s okay to stay home and sit on the couch watching reruns and reading useless literature. It’s OK. You’re sick.
Stop the madness. Stay home.
Mikaylie Kartchner is a senior majoring in journalism. Comments can be sent to mikayliek@cc.usu.edu.