The Common Cold

My coworkers have been very sick this winter. Waves of cold and flu virus have passed through at least twice. I say this because I had a cold, recovered for a week, and got another. The first was a cough and nasal congestion. The second was a deep chest cold that filled my lungs with mucus.

I often forget to think about what it means to be just another sack of watery meat, but a cold makes it impossible to forget. As much as I hate having a cold, I think they serve a purpose of regularly reminding me that I am not just a mind that occasionally puppets this body around. I am the body too. This is only an insight that I can appreciate when I'm actually recovering, and not while the virus has me in its grip, causing me to wake up to cough out long ropes of yellow-green mucus. Seriously, it looked like I had tried to swallow a can of Ghostbusters slime and failed.

All that coughing and soreness makes me fear the flu even more. Some of you may recall that I had my first adult bout with the traditional flu this year as well. I still can't eat donuts.

I'll be happy to be healthy again. Then I can appreciate being a sack of watery meat with an amazing autoimmune system, which is totally cool. But you know what would be really cool? If I could install a microscopic web cam in my bloodstream and watch my blood armies go to town like Spartans on the "warpath."