I hate head-colds.

[crfriend]

And I speak from recent first-hand experience on the matter.

I started feeling lousy Tuesday afternoon when driving home from work and was completely and entirely miserable on Wednesday morning. Since I had the Company-issued laptop in my possession I figured I'd do the work-from-home thing and get a knotty problem sorted out that's been vexing the folks at work. I did get a proof-of-concept solution running -- and proofed against a local database I had on the laptop -- but the execution speed was pitiful, to put it politely. I forwarded the script to my boss anyway just to prove I hadn't been wasting time, and pointed out that I wasn't feeling well and would probably work from home on Wednesday and re-implement the thing in another idiom.

Thursday rolled around and, if anything, I felt worse than I did on Wednesday. I stayed true to my word and di the re-implementation in PL/pgSQL (a completely new idiom for me, but since it sports structures and other bits that I'm already familiar with (ALGOL and straight SQL) it didn't take long to get "up and running with it" other than the fact that I couldn't lean forward without my nose running all over the keyboard (yuck!). The good news was that where the prototype took almost a half-hour to process 6500 rows in the database the one in PL/pgSQL took under a minute. I published the findings back to my boss and went to bed strongly hinting that I was just going to chuck Friday as a sick day.

Which I did. I felt so indescribably horrid on Friday that I was, to all intents and purposes, non-functional. I suspected I had a logic error in my programming, but couldn't find it between sneezes, coughs, and bouts with the runny nose. I finally ferreted the bug out on Saturday.

Today, too, was bad. There was one time I blew my nose and overwhelmed the tissue (a full-size paper towel, mind) to the point where I had to wipe stuff from the floor.

I'm feeling better, though, and if I go to work tomorrow I'll likely be mute because my voice won't be working from all the post-nasal drip from the past 5 days. I'm sure it'll be enjoyable. At least I work with -- and for -- folks who respect me and my skill-set now, which was not the case 6 months ago. I just need to figure out a way to stop the non-productive coughing which does nothing but irritate the back of my throat...

[Tor]

Sorry to hear about that. I've had something similar not long ago and lost a couple days to it. Not fun, but at least I didn't go down like I would once have (and other people around here have). Hope the last of it dissipates quickly for you.

[Kilted_John]

BTDT... Except in my case, I think it was the flu. Not good, combined with the gout I have. I've been in bed for the past three weeks. Only left the house once, when my mother drove me to the urgent care clinic last Sunday. Getting severe cabin fever.

Mucinex DM will help a bit with making the cough more productive, but at the same time, less severe.

-J

[Kirbstone]

Two recommendations:

1/ Port & Brandy, a formula much praised by a publican friend of mine.
2/ A three-week holiday in Australia where the air is warm & dry.

Sometimes it's difficult to draw the line between a severe cold and the 'flu, but generally the latter tends to generate high temperatures which effectively keep the sufferer in bed.
I've just recovered from a right nasty, which stayed with me more than a week.

As they are both viruses it's the body's own defences that overcomes then in the end and medications are only palliative.

Tom.

[partlyscot]

Yes, it's been making the rounds here as well. I spent 2 and a half days last week essentially out of it. In one 48 hour period I think I slept close to 36... My symptoms weren't as bad as yours, but that's the worst I've had in a long time. It wasn't the flu, as I had a little brush with that the previous week. I've had more time off sick in January than in the previous 5 years.