I recently woke up and started sneezing. I wasn’t happy about this turn of events. Who would be? But I was going to a conference that day, one I look forward to every year. I didn’t want to miss it.
Perhaps I was having an allergy attack. I do live with four cats and two dogs, in addition to my husband, Paul. Our house is heated by forced hot air. We have a Victorian house with high ceilings. On occasion, a tuft of shed cat hair will lift from a rug and float gently on a current emanating from a cast-iron grate.
I hoped that such a thing had skimmed by my nose as I slept. My sneezing would soon end, I told myself.
It did not stop. I took my allergy pill, as well as ibuprofen. I used my nasal spray. Green tea came next.
But I just kept on sneezing.
What should I do? I wanted to go to the conference, which was happening just a few miles away, on the other side of town. My school district had paid for me to go, and there would be no refund at this late date. On the other hand, did I want to risk infecting people, including my entire library staff, who would also be at the conference?
Though I was not convinced at this point that I had a cold, icky stuff was on my mind. I had just finished reading “Terrible Typhoid Mary: The True Story of the Most Dangerous Cook in America,” by Susan Campbell Bartoletti. Mary Mallon was a carrier of typhoid fever in the early 20th century who appeared healthy and claimed to never have had the disease. Though she undeniably transmitted the disease to people she cooked for, she was unfairly “outed,” and given that cruel moniker.
Germ theory was in its infancy when Mary was spreading her bacteria around New York. Now we know more about it than we want to know. I envisioned myself as a toxic version of the Peanuts character “Pig-Pen.” He was followed by a cloud of dust wherever he went. My cloud consisted of the common cold virus.
Of course, I didn’t know this for sure. If my cloud was dust, that would explain the sneezing.
The only problem with my rationalizing was that I don’t usually react to allergens by sneezing. I have food allergies that can give me hives and/or anaphylaxis. But grass, pollen and dust mostly give me a headache and congestion.
Zero hour arrived. I decided to go, as I could always leave early if I started feeling worse. Paul handed me a stack of his big, white man-sized handkerchiefs after he saw me practically empty an entire tissue box on my own. I made sure I had a full bottle of hand sanitizer in my purse, and set off.
Maneuvering in a a crowd isn’t easy when you are trying not to sneeze on people, trying not to have gunk run out of your nose and onto your face and trying to avoid touching things other people will touch with the hand that has held a handkerchief to your face.
I could have worn a gauzy mask, I suppose. It’s all the rage in Tokyo. That probably would have caused people to treat me like—yes, Typhoid Mary.
That’s who I was channeling. I felt guilty, even though I still wasn’t sure if I had a cold. But just in case, I tried to keep my germs to myself. I scrubbed my hands down before approaching the breakfast buffet. I tried not to breathe on the fruit. By the time I got back to my table, I was exhausted.
The medications were helping a little. I made it through the keynote and two workshop sessions without embarrassing myself with deafening sneezes or ill-timed nose overflows. But I got a bit of bad news between the workshops. I’d been in a neighboring school district several times recently (the last being three days before the conference) to do observations.When I ran into one of my host librarians at the conference, she told me her colleague hadn’t been able to come to the workshop because she was quite ill with a cold or maybe even the flu. And she, herself, wasn’t feeling so hot either.
Maybe I did have a cold after all.
Lunch was served in individual boxes, so I was able to keep my germs to myself. I found I didn’t have much appetite. My throat was getting sore. I decided I would leave just before the last session. I felt so awful, I told my library team I probably wouldn’t be at work the next day.
Once home, I slept for two hours. Paul bought some chicken soup, and I drank some more green tea. I went to bed early.
The next day, I was still sick, but the sneezing was slowing down. The sore throat had worsened, and I had a headache. I rested, ate soup, drank tea.
By the third day, the sneezing had stopped. I wasn’t 100 percent, but I did feel closer to my old self. Maybe it was an allergy attack after all.
The good news is that neither Paul nor any of my library colleagues came down with anything. But was that because I’d done a good job of corralling my germs, or did I just never have a cold to begin with? I guess I’ll never know.
No comments:
Post a Comment