Member-only story
MINI RANT | HEALTH
You Say It’s Just a Cold
Not everyone agrees.
My nose drips, and my throat burns. My head swells with inflammation, threatening to explode. Should I go to work? Will anyone notice? It’s not as if anyone else worries about suffering. It’s just a cold, they’d say. Why should anyone care?
I hear that phrase all the time. When hacking, coworkers walk by my office offering me their lungs while shoppers at the market cough over mangos in the produce aisle. It seems nobody’s concerned for their well-being or mine. Sickness won’t keep them down in the first days until the symptoms worsen. That’s when vibrant persons get their first hint of misery, sending them home while they find themselves down for the count.
But there are always those few who push through. Unfortunately, they’re the ones who threaten to infect us all. But who cares? It’s only a cold — just a cold.
Is it only me, or has the world gone crazy? When did we become so callous about the discomfort of feeling sick? Was it always like this, or did years of being banished to our homes cause us to rebound to the side of recklessness?
I don’t know about you, but when I get sick, it isn’t for a day. It takes weeks to recover. With Covid, it took months.
