Sneezures!

"Oh my," I said.  "I just about had a sneezure!"

"What is a sneezure?"  My coworker asked curiously.

"It's where you sneeze five times in succession.  I learned about them in second year Pathology in Medical School."

"Really?"

"Yes," I said and always willing to add a little extra information to the discussion added.  "The good news is that I can't get grandma sneezures because, first of all, I'm not old enough and second, I'm a man.  Women are the only ones who can get them, but I understand they are pretty rough."

For some reason, speeches like this seem to result in much eye rolling...

Sneezure or not, the truth is that I have a cold right now.  Doctors are not any different from average people in that if they are exposed to enough viruses, they will eventually catch one.  Unfortunately, although I am a member of the "secret cabal of medicine," I do not know of any secret cures of either the common cold or cancer.  I just have to struggle along with the same tools that everyone else does -- Kleenexes and Vick's Vaporub. 

The biggest thing about colds is that they are a test of patience.  It is in the midst of an attack of the sneezes that I understand why my patients come to see me after only three or four days of symptoms.  Surely, now, in the second decade of the 21st century we would have solutions that would shorten the course of such an irritating illness.

The hardest thing in life is waiting -- waiting for a doctor who is running an hour behind, waiting at a check out line, or just waiting to see if the prescribed treatment for whatever malady is going to work.  I am old enough that I no longer ask periodically "Are we there yet,"  when we are travelling to some far away land, like Tennessee, but the reason is not that I have more patience than my children.  It is just that I tell time better than they do and know how long our journey is going to take.

Life isn't like that.  When we start on a journey, we do not really know how long it will take or even what the outcome will be.  This is a test of patience and endurance and all of those spiritual muscles we don't like to exercise.

God will take us through every valley He leads us into -- in His time.

Even a bad case of sneezures.