The winter of my discontent

This is the time of year when I am at my least sociable. Friends  - I’ll dismiss easily, the school mums’group I’ll ignore, my own family become my worst enemies. And all for what? – the common cold, virus or the F word.  I can’t even write the last for fear of well..feeling fearful.

Every winter is my winter of discontent as I become an obsessive avoider of illness. For once struck down, I descend rapidly into a self-pitying demise all because I’m allergic to every cold/virus-relieving medicine there is.

Strangely though or perhaps typically when trying to avoid something, IT hunts me down anyway so why I bother I really don’t know. 

Last year I forgot to get an F jab and yes of course contracted the horrid thing. As soon as I bought my 2009 diary my first scribbled entry was for the month of October. ‘Get F jab’ it reads in large red letters. That hasn’t protected me from The Virus of course.

Forget sympathy, if I detect one whiff of a sniff whilst chatting to someone I’ll come out with all manner of excuses to depart the scene with more haste than is polite.

Last year, foolishly, I helped out in my son’s classroom. Once. One look at those gunge-encrusted noses and my innards filled with dread. And sure enough I’d succumbed to some virulent strain of nastiness a few days later, shivering under the duvet, feeling embittered towards all five-year olds world-wide. Recently, this year’s teacher tried to enlist my help and now thinks I’m a child-hater as I said NO so vociferously.

If someone in my family becomes ill, that really is the limit; I become a quivering wreck, hastily spraying all surfaces with antibacterial stuff. (It doesn’t work.)

The common cold sounds so innocuous but gone is the slightly bunged up sniff of a few days from my childhood. Now it seems to last about 15 weeks, all right about two. And it’s not just a sniff and a sore throat. Oh no, it’s aching, and sniffing and coughing and spluttering and sniffing again and using ten boxes of tissues when it used to be one.

And sore throats aren’t cured by strepsils that have previously seen off the said ailment for the past million years. The last sore throat I had was so painful it felt like a dozen searing knives ripping my throat out but the doctor still said it wasn’t an infection but a virus and best just take some painkillers to ease it. I can’t I thought, hasn’t he read my medical records? No, of course he hasn’t. The germs have got us well and truly scuppered. Or me at least. Roll on the spring.