Cough, Cold and Confusion

It’s heartbreaking to hear my sister intermittently bark out a cough which sounds like it’s drawn from the depth beneath her throat. For all I know, I could have been fully or partly responsible for her acquiring that ailment. I was already becoming a fan of her immune system when she was still well when I had already been coughing for a couple of days. Then, a day or two later, she was echoing the sound that I was making. I guess it was inescapable. I also heard our cousin who lives with us, try his best to stifle a really bad case of cough. Try as he might, he could not hide it. Maybe, I should have locked myself inside my room when my throat started to feel sore. Then, aside from our chorus of cough, we would also sniff some cold every once in a while. But it was the cough that was really bad.

So, we relied to seek relief from Ascof and Tuseran, and took in Strepsils and Pei Pa Koa to soothe our itching esophagi. We also had some Lola Remedios, some Bactidol and warm water with dissolved salt. No, we’re not paranoid. We just want to get rid of the cough as soon as possible.

Through chat via Messenger, I compared notes with my colleagues and found a fascinating discovery that despite having not shared physical space for almost a week due to suspension of work (due to the unstoppable juggernaut of rise of cases), we share common complaints of cough, colds, headache and body pain. We could not have possibly infected each other since we have not been in a shared space for days now. Maybe the infection started days ago. Maybe one infected another, then another infected another one, until we were all feeling the same thing. Could we have gotten a mild variant of the virus? Could this be it? Maybe we caught the virus but it was kept at bay from severity by the vaccine which we all have fully of. This couldn’t just be pure coincidence. Even Fred whom I visited to get my hair cut, told me of the same patronage of Bactidol and Strepsils for the same reasons. Maybe it’s just in season. It has been Baguio -Tagaytay cold recently with rains here and there. After all, it is quite reasonable for people to be getting cough and cold in this kind of weather, especially since despite our protests about the heat, our physical bodies are actually accustomed to tropical climate. Had Covid not existed, we might have taken these flu symptoms in stride without any major qualms. We might have treated these as part of the season, just part of life, that would naturally go away after some days or maybe after a week or two. But since the advent of the most recent virus and its variants, we would get all frantic with colds, cough and confusion.

The school break of the elementary and high school kids is extended for another week. That just makes perfect sense since the reason for the suspension still lurks around. If you rush inside because of a sudden heavy downpour. There’s only one reason for you to go back out; and that is, if the rain has stopped. Since it hasn’t, you’d stay inside. Of course, you wouldn’t get out to continue on your way if that very thing you have wanted to avoid in the first place, is still all over the place, unless you would want to go along just for the heck of it, unmindful of getting soaked to your underwear and shaking with fiery fever later.

So, what do we do? I guess, we wait. We wait for the skies to clear so we could run around under the sun and play outside again. But after the rain, would there not be puddles all around and would not the earth be all mushy, that we just might be dingy and dirty? We might not get wet from the rain but our feet might get muddy. Besides that, mosquitoes and mice make their way out to cause their own brand of diseases. So, it wouldn’t be very safe to go out after all. But what if survival depends on going out? Now, that’s another question.

We could actually get by across this heights of cases. We just have to be creative and flexible with it. But we are so stuck and too eager with traditions that we always go back to where we started.

“A people without understanding will come to ruin.” -Hosea 4:14