For the most part, Summer, Fall, and Winter pass by without incident but there is something about Spring that carries of illness on the wings of a butterfly. These colds are almost always of epic length, creeping up slowly over a week then launching a full assault that can last from days to weeks and in one extraordinary case laid me out for some six weeks. The fear of being besieged for a better part of the season fills me with dread and only serves to compound my symptoms.

The six week cold arrived in my last year of grad school. I had been attending non-stop for twenty-one months: six weeks on one week off and when I wasn’t at work I was study, writing, papers and doing research. My body eventually gave up and let the hordes of Spring through the gates of health. It was a struggle, I was to be a best man in a wedding, I had no vacation time, and the school work was piling up as well as various projects at work. Taking fistfuls of Dayquil was the only recourse I had as it became harder and harder to breath with the weight of sickness descending into my chest. Looking back on the wedding pictures I looked like something of a puffy wraith with red-rimmed eyes sunk into purple-black holes, the video picked up my labored breathing and my wet rattle of a cough. Good memories for the bride and groom.

This years cold has entered its second week, growing stronger with each passing day and I am left wondering when my body will make its stand. I’ve been keeping the supply lines of tea, water, vitamins, aspirin, and food moving but it seems to be doing little against the assault of Spring. I fear that my walls will soon be overrun and only the advent of summer with its hot, dry days will prove to be my salvation. Only time will tell.