January 19, 2012
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1 The fighter still remains.
2 So does The Cough.
3 I have had this ridiculous Cough for well over a month.
4 I rarely get sick, and I almost never take days off.
5 I don’t feel sick at all, yet this Cough still remains.
6 I’m not experiencing any sneezes, wheezes, nor prayers to Jesus.
7 I don’t mind going to school, because our campus is already infected with the thing.
8 We have almost three thousand students, many of whom cough into their elbows on a daily basis. It is epidemic. Nobody mentions it, because it is “cold season.”
9 I see people at the supermarket with it.
10 It is airborne and everywhere.
11 Students and teachers come to school with it, because it is reasonably easy to function when you have it.
12 But it is odd, because it is like nothing I’ve ever had before.
13 I used to get colds twice every year, once in September when school would start, and once in January, when winter would turn on the freeze.
14 Those colds were heroic. I would fight them with a bag full of Walgreens’ stuff: Sudafed, coughh drops, nose squirts, Visene, and on and on.
15 I remember a time years ago when it rained, and I drove down Story road to get home. I couldn’t see well because of the driving rain on my windshield. I had a horrible cold. Because it was difficult to see through the windshield, I swerved slightly. A cop pulled me over.
16 It was around six p.m. My chest felt cold. I was wheezing. I had a throbbing fever.The cop came up to the car window and pantomimed for me to roll it down.
17 “Good evening. Can I see your driver’s license?”
18 I just wanted to get home. I pulled it out, knowing this would probably be a forty-minute delay.
19 “Where you headed?”
20 “Now that you’re here, more than likely to Hell,” I thought. Always an annoying question. Personally, I always felt it was none of their business. Just get to the point. What was I doing to get pulled over, explain it to me, and give me a ticket. That’s your job. I was too tired and wheezy to bring up civil rights’ issues though. I wearily said, “I’m trying to go home.” Walter Mitty.
21 “Well you swerved back there; did you know that?”
22 “Yes, the rain made it difficult for me to see through my windshield. That’s why I’m not on the freeway. I just want to get home.”
23 “Have you been drinking?”
24
25 “No sir. The rain made it difficult for me to see through my windshield. Plus I have this lousy cold, and a fever, and I am exhausted.”
26 The guy shined his flashlight in my face and moved it up and down. With one look he knew I hadn’t had a drop.
27 “Wow. You really DO look bad.”
28 I didn’t say a word, but I felt like retorting, “Thanks for the compliment.”
29 He became pretty sympathetic. “Okay Mr. Harrington, what I’m going to do is ask you to drive your vehicle safely home. You were smart going the backroads and streets. Just be aware that you were swerving, and you need to avoid that and get home safely.”
30 “Uh…yeah. Thanks.” He went off, and I continued home. Good guy.
31 That night I was so weak that I took the next day off.
32 I rarely take days off unless someone in my family is sick, or unless I have a ridiculous grading deadline. Anybody who knows me knows that.
33 But I took the next day off to go see the doctor.
34 When I got there, she examined me, and her first words were, “Oh my God!”
35 Great bedside manner.
36 It turned out that I had pneumonia. I was told to stay in bed for at least five days. She gave me some sort of pills and sent me on my way.
37 Five days away from lessons was always a nightmare. I don’t remember what I used for lesson plans; I just remember letting the sub know that it was okay to tell my students that I was about to die. Well, that I was a tad moribund, a vocab word I always teach just in case I have to take an extended leave. It means “at the point of death.”
38 Yeah, I played the “D” card, but only so that they would behave for anyone who would take over.
39 Being absent for any extended time is really tough on both teachers and students. Quite often lesson plans go ignored, horror stories occur, and anger sets in. If you lay a word like “moribund” into the students’ vocabulary lessons, they are more likely to understand the gravity of the situation, and to behave more properly. Or not.
40 My recollection is that they misbehaved, and that on my return I had to lower the boom on them.
41 Thats the reason that to this day, I try never to be absent if I could avoid it.
42 Yesterday at the English meeting, the Cough returned. No fever. No oddities. Just this aggressive cough that sends everyone running. It was at the end of the meeting. Everyone smiled, but they commented politely, “Wow, you really should stay home.” “You are obviously sick.” What I really heard was, “Kill the monster!”
43 I got back to my room. As the union assembly rep, I was supposed to go to a meeting at four. The coughing continued ridiculously. I remembered the year I didn’t rest, and almost killed myself with pneumonia. If a doctor looks at you and says, “Oh my God!” you listen. You listen for the rest of your life.
44 I decided not to go to the meeting. All I could picture was a bunch of teachers thinking, “Why is he HERE?”
45 Because the Cough is everywhere. You are already exposed. It isn’t pneumonia, it’s just a naggy, repeating-rifle irritation. You can walk. You can think. You can work. But you can’t make it go away. It is epidemic in San Jose. It is probably epidemic in California.
46 I have had to cancel seeing friends, seeing family, going places, and even visiting new babies. This thing is pretty restricting.
47 I made chicken soup last night. It worked, even lured me into a false sense of security. I breathed nicely last night.
48 When I woke up this morning, another fit of coughing occurred. No fever. No sneezes. I took a pill, and it subsided, at least for now.
49 So I’m going back in. I will be coked to the gills on Wal-phed, Wal-tussen, Wal-nose squirts, Wal-cola, Wal-nex, and on and on. I can’t afford major brands of stuff anymore.
50 I have given my theories about it in the DN. Mainstream news seems to think it’s not all around us. It isn’t if you haven’t got it. If you have it, you know.
51 I’m not really trying to complain about it here; I’m just trying to get word out that we are in the middle of a serious epidemic, and it is being ignored by the mainstream news. Here is an article I found declaring it epidemic. It was written in July. My guess is that the numbers in this article were ridiculously low:
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/health&id=7582798
52 I’ll keep fighting, but it is getting pretty serious. And I know there are people reading this who are thinking, “Just stay home. You are infecting everybody.”
53 Everybody is already exposed. I can’t take two months off because I have a cough.
54 Whoops.
55 I have THE Cough.
56 And I don’t want my students to be in the hands of someone who might mess up their learning. We’ve made a lot of progress this year. I want them to continue doing well.
57 I just coughed again. Nothing in the chest this time. Hmmm. Maybe it’s retreating?
58 I’m looking forward to the rain clearing the pollution out. Everything isn’t a conspiracy. The San Jose sky has been murky to a ridiculous degree for the past month.
59 Where there’s smoke?
60 Pray for rain.
61 Peace.
~H~
