Fighting the common cold
Like virtually everyone else in the free world, I was disabled this week by what I considered an uncommonly powerful strain of the common cold, but is better described by its street name, "the Crud."
Upon feeling the oncoming symptons, I did what I was supposed to. I denied them. Then I began taking over-the-counter zinc. Didn't stop the tide. The next day, I was down for the count.
As a result, I began pawing through all of the cold medicines we had accumulated over the years. Tylenol this, Advil that, Cepacol here, generic there. I took some pain reliever and tried unsuccessfully to remember what I had read about the over-the-counter medicines and whether or not they actually helped. Oh well, let's try some of everything.
When you feel this bad, it's hard to tell whether any of them actually worked. It's sort of "imagine how you would have felt had you not taken it." But I do know one thing that worked.
I found some children's cough medicine that had expired two years ago. The intended recipient is now in college. I debated briefly whether it could actually hurt me or whether the expiration date was simply the drug maker's way of scaring us into buying more product. I drank the directed two teaspoons for a 6-12 year-old and resisted the temptation to double the dosage.
Stopped coughing almost immediately. And I'm still alive.