Under the weather

It is a challenge for me to call in sick to work.

The nature of my job with deadlines and news events that happen on their own schedules is that there is little time to be sick, which historically has meant that I have tried to pay as little attention as possible to when I have been sick.

While we all know the stereotypes of people who take to their beds moaning and groaning with copious amounts of chicken soup at the first sign of a sniffle, I tend toward the opposite side of the spectrum. Rather than stay home with a cold, I go out and spend several hours covering events in the cold rain so that it eventually develops into a nasty bout of some sort of creeping awful of an illness.

As my mother often told me growing up, if you are going to do something make sure you do it as well as possible. This has resulted in at least one notable occasion where publisher Carol O’Leary ordered me to go home and get well before coming back to the office or she would take my key to the building away.

I started feeling a little under the weather on Saturday morning. By itself this was easily explainable. Given the very large number of people who took part in the Medford Area Chamber of Commerce’s adult trick or treating event, it is my guess that there were many other adults in the Medford area who got off to a sluggish start on Saturday morning.

I didn’t think very much of it, until later in the day when I was finding myself occasionally sniffling or suppressing a sneeze. The telltale body aches, I put down to weather changes and actually being active.

On Sunday, my nose started running and I would be hit by the occasional sneezing fit. I bundled up and hit downtown for the annual Harvest Days parade, taking pictures of kids in their costumes and all manner of creative floats heading down the road.

In retrospect, I don’t think I did myself any favors by sitting outside after the parade handing out candy to the handful of trick or treaters who made it down our block. Because of where our porch light is located, unless I am sitting out front, many people can’t tell we are participating until after they have passed our house.

By the time trick or treating ended, I was well-chilled and was feeling less than terrific. Again, I mostly blamed it on my own stupidity for sitting out in the cold for as long as I had. A friend of mine messaged me about going to see the new Dune movie at Broadway Theatre Sunday night. In an uncharacteristic fit of wisdom, I passed on the invite worried that I was coming down with a cold.

By Monday, the cold had me firmly in its grasp with my nose running like a garden hose and rapid-fire repeated sneezing.

As an aside, repeated sneezing is one of the things that drives me bonkers. I mean, really once or twice is sufficient and if you are routinely doing four or five in a row you are just begging for attention, or, alternatively have something that you need to deal with and that you should go deal with it privately.

As I stared at my computer screen with watery eyes and generally feeling like something you would scrape off your shoes after walking through a barnyard, I realized that I was probably being as annoying to my coworkers as I was being to myself and went home where I promptly fell asleep for the remainder of the afternoon, only getting up to head to the planning commission meeting Monday evening.

The cold and flu medicine I took to help me sleep Monday night made getting up on Tuesday a bit more of a challenge than normal, but as least I woke up feeling far better than I had the day before. I made it into work without too much sneezing or nose-blowing and have been giving my personal squeeze bottle of hand sanitizer a workout.

Given the times we live in, I have been avoiding going too near my coworkers and am wearing a mask in the office while closely monitoring my symptoms, although at this point it appears to be the same cold I have gotten every fall since I was a toddler. Let’s hope that a few more good nights of sleep and not overdoing it will make this cold a memory by next week.

Brian Wilson is News Editor at The Star News.