The Common Cold

Do you hate the common cold as much as I do? It leaves you feeling headachy, sniffly, stuffy and generally lousy. Nevertheless, it’s not severe enough for anyone other than your loved ones to commiserate with you. (Your loved ones are probably only feigning compassion to humour you.) And doctors would likely tag you with a hypochondriac label if you ran to them with so insignificant an ailment.

A big part of the problem is the name used by pretty much all of the non-medical world, along with many medical professionals as well: the common cold. You feel miserable. What you’d really like is for people to make you feel special, but no. You’re merely common. Who the hell wants to hear that?

It’s worse for me than for many other people because I’m single. At some point in  my cold I usually have to venture out to buy food and other supplies. There’s no one who will do that for me.

As I bundle up, stuff a cache of Kleenex in my pockets, and trundle out the door, I picture people spying me out their windows as I walk past. I visualize them telling their servants to draw the drapes so the sight of me won’t offend their sensibilities.

Commoners

“Can’t they keep those commoners off the streets,” I imagine them asking. “He has such an obviously common cold. I wouldn’t want the sight of him to spoil the taste of this fine champagne and caviar. Oh, and tell the cook we’d like to start dinner with foie gras, followed by a lobster bisque, and then move to the pheasant course.”

In truth, I don’t live in an area where that scenario is the least bit likely. It’s a fairly middle-class—probably lower-middle-class, at that—downtown neighbourhood. I assume that everyone here opens and closes his or her own drapes. What’s more, many of those drapes are several stories above street level. Thus, not all of the windows afford a good view of pedestrians. Nonetheless, I can’t get that vision out of my head.

Having a common cold makes me feel so plebeian. What I’m looking for, on the other hand, is deep, sincere, universal love, sympathy and respect from all of the people of the world.

Clearly, the common cold should fire its entire marketing department. It would get much more respect if it had a more impressive name. How about, instead of the common cold, the royal cold or the regal cold?

Why not? They might not admit it, but kings, queens, princes, princesses, dukes, duchesses, counts, countesses, and all of the other hereditary upper-class twits get what we call the common cold, so why not name it for them? That will allow the rest of us to feel better for having gotten it.

Common Cold Advice

You often hear a lot of advice about how to prevent, cure or lessen the symptoms of a common cold. One of the most frequently prescribed remedies includes “drink lots of fluids and get plenty of sleep.” Sometimes it amazes me how many otherwise rational people will believe and propagate the ramblings of village idiots. This advice could come from no other source because it’s impossible to follow it.

I believe there is a simple, immutable biological law. Over time, fluid output roughly equals input. I admit that I don’t know much about biology, so I imagine it’s possible that the body retains some fluid for its long-term use and some definitely comes out as sweat, but, for the most part, what goes in eventually flows out through the urinary tract. And “eventually” usually isn’t all that long relative to the course of human life.

I’m not a bed wetter. So, if I drink a lot of fluids I’m going to be doing a lot of getting up and going to the bathroom. That doesn’t leave enough time for getting plenty of sleep.

And, with regard to all of that peeing, I’ve never measured, so it might be just my imagination, but I could swear that when I have a cold the volume of pee that comes out of my penis (and, thankfully, out of nowhere else) exceeds the volume of liquid that I pour down my throat. How is that possible?

Maybe I was retaining water and the cold somehow released it. Like I said, I know very little about biology, so I suppose that’s possible.

Then there’s my nose. I don’t know about you, but when I get a common cold it usually goes through phases. During one phase, I’m encouraged to notify the fire department. That way, if the city water pressure isn’t at full strength, when the firefighters are called out, they can rush me to the scene and hook two hoses up to my nose, one in each nostril. Every time I get a cold, there’s usually at least one or two days when my runny nose gets that bad.

Common Colds Defy Physics

Considering all of these avenues of outflow, there is no doubt in my mind that, when I have a cold, output greatly exceeds input. I would expect that, given the excess outflow, if the laws of physics hold, I should lose several pounds during every bout of a common cold. But that’s not the case.

When I get on a scale after finally beating back the cold, if I lean as far as I can in just the right direction I might coax the scale into telling me I’ve lost an ounce or so, but that’s about it.

Admittedly, a common cold is not like the flu. Unlike the rare occasions when I had the flu, I don’t tend to lose my appetite much when I have a common cold. On the other hand, my appetite doesn’t increase much either. As I said, I would have thought that if my liquid output exceeded my liquid input and my solid input did not increase I’d lose weight. But, no. The common cold won’t even give me that satisfaction for my troubles.

Have a Common Cold? Eat Stuff. Drink Stuff.

Apart from the impossible advice of drinking and sleeping aplenty, if you listen to enough people you’ll also compile a mile-long shopping list of food and drink that, according to them, will battle the common cold. Over the years, I’ve been told to consume one or more of the following when I have a cold:

• Chicken soup
• Consommé
• Tea with honey and lemon
• Tea and dry toast
• Herbal tea (various kinds)
• Garlic
• Zinc
• Echinacea
• Acetylsalicylic acid (Aspirin)
• Acetaminophen (Tylenol)
• Ibuprofen (Advil)
• Other over-the-counter cold medications
• Oranges
• Orange juice
• Vitamin C pills
• Vitamin C fizzy tablets
• Rum
• Whisky
• Hot toddies
• And the hundreds of other liquid and solid supposed cold-fighters that I’ve undoubtedly forgotten over the years

Don’t bother asking me what a hot toddy is. It’s one of the very few of the above remedies that I haven’t tried. When I’m told to drink a hot toddy to cure my cold, I’m usually feeling too miserable to bother finding out what it is. When I’m better, I usually forget all about them. So, I have no idea what a hot toddy is.

Nothing Works

I’m into my senior years. I haven’t kept a strict accounting, but I think I average about one common cold a year. Some years two; others three; still others none. Over the decades, I think I’ve tried all of the above home remedies except, as I said, hot toddies. Often, I’ll consume more than one of the above nostrums during the course of a single cold. My conclusion: none of them is worth a damn.

Maybe I should try a hot toddy next time, but I doubt it will change my conclusion.

It reminds me of an episode of the 1960s television show The Beverly Hillbillies. Daisy Moses (known principally as Granny) has a concoction that she guarantees will cure the common cold with just one spoonful. After a half-hour of Granny trying to push her cure, at the end of the show we learn that the remedy protocol is: take a spoonful of the potion, get in bed, and seven to ten days later your cold will be gone.

I think the same formula holds for all of the other common cold cures that people recommend.

If you have a common cold, you have my sincerest sympathies. Take heart. If it really is the common cold, you’ll probably be feeling better in no more than seven to ten days, no matter what you do. And, if it’s not the common cold, well, at least you can take comfort in the knowledge that you’re not common after all. Isn’t that special?