Animal, Vegetable, Miserable

It starts with a tingling in your throat, or your chest. Pretty soon, you are hot, a little dizzy and on your way to “miserable!” No, I’m not talking about falling in love. I’m speaking of a tiny little invasive “bug” that can bring a strong person down: the cold virus. 

I woke two days ago feeling awful. I thought I had allergies, but, NO! It was the beginning of a chest cold. I haven’t had a cold since Covid entered the scene, so I was unhappily surprised by this one. Traditionally, my colds appear dramatically, quickly making their way to my sinus cavities where, the virus sets up a little condo, inviting their bacteria friends to move in with them. We have all heard by now that we take too many antibiotics and they don’t work on colds anyway. But they do vanquish bacterial infections.

My particular “colds” used to last up to three months; three months of not sleeping, having laryngitis, low-grade fevers and lots of lots of strangely-colored phlegm. But cold viruses only last about seven-fourteen days. Tell that to the legions of doctors who refused to give me antibiotics to kill the bacterial infections I always got whenever I caught a cold. I actually had to find a new doctor when mine refused to give me antibiotics and the bacterial infection, over a three-month course, spread to my eustachian tubes, causing tinnitus and permanent hearing loss in one ear.

One of Brigham and Womens’ top otolaryngologists and surgeons treated me with weeks of Prednisone and wrote a letter to my doctor, explaining that the particular configuration of my sinuses, along with surgical scars cause blockage when swelling from bacterial infections. Without antibiotics, I can’t rid myself of the infections. Fortunately, my new doctor keeps a copy of that letter on file, but I still panic when I feel I’m coming down with a cold.

Luckily, this cold is not up in my sinuses. I’ve had total laryngitis for four days. I’ve been drinking gallons of medicinal teas and fruit juice, holding my face over a vaporizer and trying to get more sleep. I try baking it out by using a heating pad on my chest. 

Cold viruses are only 15 to 30 nanometers in diameter; eensy-weency little things when you consider a human hair is 80,000 nanometers in width! The jury is still out on whether one can even call them “living.” They are fascinating things, alive or not. (You can read up on them at the National Institute of Health site, assuming the NIH has not lost its funding and is still in existence.)

All of us have been in public, trapped near someone who has gone out with a bad cold when they should be home in bed. Throughout my 30’s and 40’s, this was especially true whenever I had to ride on New York City’s own Petri dish; the subway. Some people just don’t have much choice. I have to admit that had I stayed home each time I was sick with a cold, I would have never gone to work. I had to get to gigs (with my harp) and perform, regardless of whether I had laryngitis or not. And besides, everyone who rode the subway was sick with the same virus at the same time. 

These days,there seems to be a lapse of training of kids when it comes to social hygiene. Perhaps it’s a backlash from Covid restrictions parents found oppressive. When one is confined in a public space with potentially sick youngsters who are hooping, coughing and sneezing without benefit of a tissue or any attempt to cover their mouths, I know there is a parent at fault. I was once on a five-hour flight to California with a family whose young boy coughed vigerously into the shared-air space the entire ride. I felt badly for the little fellow, but much worse for myself when two days later, I developed a cold…and, a sinus infection!

You would think that, by 2025, we humans who presume that the world is ours to manipulate and re-form in any way we wish, would have triumphed over a thing so small and ubiquitous as the cold virus. I read this week in the Times that gene-splicing (CRISPR) has been used to cure a baby boy of a genetic disease that would have killed him within a year. Marvelous, miraculous things are tested every day; treatments that will ease and lengthen our lives. But like any bad-ass crime organization, the Picornaviridae family (which includes cold viruses) is neither easily infiltrated nor taken down. Having a cold in 2025 is nearly as bad as having one in 1725. At least we no longer believe in treating with leeches, blood-letting, tinctures of mercury or blistering.

Everyone needs to get a cold now and then, just to remind themselves of how weak and defenseless our species is. Colds are here to test us, at least for a while. There is, as yet, no cure, and precious little help in over-the counter medicine. We forget how painful and disruptive colds can be. No matter how powerful, rich, smart, young, or healthy are, we are only one tiny rhinovirus away from becoming as weak and dependent as an infant. But, like Jacob wrestling the angel, we usually prevail, maybe not with a hip injury like Jacob's, but certainly a little humbled.