Colds

I hate colds.

It really isn't the coughing, sneezing, aching head, or even the generally worn down feelings that you get with one.  It isn't even the fact that I can finish off a Kleenex box in an hour or two (by the way, by the end of the first box, Kleenexes feel like sand paper on your nose, even if they are "ultra soft").  Anyway, the biggest problem with colds is just that you can't do anything to treat them.

(I have one right now, if you haven't guessed)...

Antibiotics don't work, that's certain.  You are guaranteed about seven days of cough with Keflex, maybe about a week of symptoms without.  I always recommend my patients to drink more H2O, but personally, the biggest thing I have found is that when you drink a gallon of water a day, you spend more time in the bathroom.  Maybe you don't notice your cough as much when you constantly need to urinate.  Vitamin C never did much for me either.

But people never were bothered to much by colds in the old day, did they?  They were more worried about scary things like Small Pox and Plague and Typhoid Fever, to be bothered by a little runny nose and cough.

I suppose it all comes back to the need to be in control.  It's the twenty-first century and certainly we should be able to do something to treat the common cold.

I suppose that's why there are folks who come to see me on the second day of symptoms.  "I just want to catch it early," they tell me. 

That's all well and good, but having caught it early, I am afraid that they will keep until their handy immune system kicks in to get things under control.

We all want to be in control of every situation, but whether it is the weather, forest fires, or even common colds, so often we come to the realization that we aren't in control and in fact, we never really were.

That's really OK, because there are bigger hands than ours that are taking care of things and God has given each one of us an immune system that can deal with all sorts of germs.

Even the viruses that cause the common cold.