11/3/11 The March of Sickness

I knew, as I went to bed last night, that this morning I would have a cold. All the usual suspects showed - the heavy dryness in my sinuses, the stinging, swollen throat, the shaky exhaustion - and made my dreams (once I was finally able to sleep) strange and unsettling.

On waking, however, I found myself still only in the initial stages, waiting on the further indignities to come. I ate handfuls of Tylenol, sucked down spicy and bitter herbal elixirs, gargled desperately with warm water into which I'd dissolved crushed aspirin and salt, but nothing seemed to arrest the inevitable march of sickness through my body.