A cough that lingers

Getting sick over the winter holidays sucks, so here I am, complaining about it.

Originally written/drafted January 3, 2026. (I’m all better now, thanks for wondering)

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Photo by Rex Pickar on Unsplash

There’s no pleasure to be taken in a flu that knocks you out for over a week. This isn’t some revelatory stance, I know that, but it bears saying.

I’ve been sick for a while now. Too long. How naive I was this year to think that my immune system would maintain its pristine capacity. I usually get the flu shot each winter, but after nearly three years of not even a sniffle, I, in all my hubris, thought I could forgo it.

I was wrong. Of course.

It all started on day one of my winter holiday. I awoke on that Saturday, beaten down by the plague. My sinuses blocked, my head aching, my limbs sore, and my throat—god my throat—ripped to shreds as if I had swallowed glass.

It always starts in my throat. Has since I was a child. If some flu or cold is going to take me out for a while, it’ll tear my throat apart first. Sending a message like a mob boss sending fingers in the mail. So when I felt that all too familiar pain in my throat, I knew it was the beginning of the end.

The bells of illness are tolling.

For the past week or so, I’ve been dragging my half-alive corpse to and from the La-Z-Boy rocking chair in my living room and the bedroom. A leper’s walk between quarantine zones. My Costco-sized box of tissues tucked under my arm, my thick robe tied tightly around my waist, my limbs heavy and weighing me down.

The isolation of illness is the worst part.

In an effort to keep my partner safe from whatever the hell it is I’m battling, we maintain a fairly strict no-contact rule. Which means I’ve been sleeping alone, sitting alone, and eating alone. I understand why. He is self-employed with no actual “paid time off” or “sick days”, so being down and out for the count can detrimentally impact our shared finances and his business. I’m not resentful of our safe distancing practice, but it gets lonely. I’m not much of a touchy-feely person in the first place, so the loss of physical contact between the one person I’m comfortable with and me is enormous. I find that without safe physical touch, without regular social contact, and without regular ventures outside of my home, I begin to go feral—losing my already fragile social skills.

I hate feeling like a walking contagion.

Like a threat to those I love.

But illness, especially this cough that lingers heavily on my lungs, is an important reminder that I’m still human. That I’m vulnerable. That I need rest. And that if I keep ignoring my bodily needs, my body will rebel against me, shutting me down and forcing me to stop, to take a respite, to recover.

That’s a harder pill to swallow than the Buckleys I’ve been taking.

But rest is the best medicine.

So here I am, trying to rest.

Trying to recover.

Trying.

Again.

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