I write this as I lie dying. Well, that’s how it feels. Don’t let anybody ever dismiss you as a whinger when you complain of the misery of enduring the dreaded winter virus.
After a close encounter with a foreign import – straight off the London plane, thanks, darling husband – I now understand why the World Health Organisation considers modern viruses a “threat to the entire world”.
This one certainly poses a threat to my entire world as one by one our household went down.
Sore throats, running noses, throbbing heads, helpless, wracking coughs, congestion that will have me sounding like Kermit the Frog for a fortnight.
You can’t sit upright due to the pain; you can’t lie down because then you can’t breathe through your nose. I’ve organised a direct debit from my savings account to the local chemist as we continue to build our firewall of analgesics, cough suppressants, throat lozenges and decongestants.
Because a visit from a virus makes me a frequent flyer to the unhappy island of sinusitis, I clutch my antibiotics to me even more closely than I do my spouse (to be honest, I’m still grumpy at him for bringing this bug home) and try to cough and sneeze my way to sleep each night. Ah, winter: there’s really nothing like it.
No, it’s not flu: I know what flu is and, while many misuse that term, I know it’s important to get that distinction right.
But it’s not “the common cold” either; that’s far too anodyne a description for something as vicious and debilitating as this.
It’s a viral infection that takes the form of the charming acronym URTI: an upper respiratory tract infection. And yes, the URTI does hurty.
In the traditional Australian workplace, it’s the kind of thing you were always expected to whack with pseudoephedrine and then soldier on, happily spreading the virus far and wide.
I am only now starting to see a serious understanding of the need to keep infectious outbreaks quarantined and workplaces as germ-free as possible.
Some employers now genuinely regard this as a productivity issue: a week of one worker lost versus rolling weeks of sick leave as the virus makes it way through your staff.
Perhaps it’s been the sobering effects of SARS outbreaks and our much deeper appreciation of the seriousness of viral outbreaks.
Perhaps we are all really quite sick of just how sick we can get with these things. But it is heartening to see that some workplaces really do prefer that you keep your virus to yourself.
Why do viruses – and colds – flourish in winter when they really have nothing to do with feeling cold? According to findings published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, it turns out the flu virus flourishes in low absolute humidity – when it’s cold outside and the air is drier.
Germs apparently last longer and pass more effectively from person to person in these conditions. The report’s researchers suggested that absolute humidity levels be raised in buildings such as hospitals where the disease easily spreads. Does this mean there are fewer winter viruses in Brisbane than in Melbourne?
I don’t imagine this is the end of my winter war with small infectious agents, although I feel pretty bloody battle-hardened after this one.
I will redouble my cross-infection prevention (cough, and you will be put in a room by yourself until it stops) and I will start using those awful hand sanitisers that medicos have been urging on us for years.
I will permanently smell like a doctor’s waiting room. But at least I won’t be in one.
