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6:17pm May 18, 2012

Is the exhaustion when you have a cold, the virus’s sneaky way of spreading itself by ensuring you’ll be unable to carry out the best hygiene procedures for the situation?

Seriously I’m not capable of washing my hands that many times. As in I’d literally end up on the floor for hours, possibly injuring myself on the way there. And I can’t tolerate the smell of hand sanitizer without other problems. And my head is too fuzzy to remember where I put my hands anyway. It just all seems perfect for spreading this stuff.

(Fortunately all staff are capable of wearing masks and washing their hands constantly. I just worry about the cold spreading to other disabled or elderly people, in the building or sharing staff with me, who could get really sick this way.)

But people who are capable of it? Please take proper sanitary measures. Colds may be something you are okay with risking, but they’re not harmless to everyone.

I think I’m already on the way to a lung infection. I have a maneuver I do to cough up phlegm, which is hard to cough up anyway, because of bronchiectasis. Right now every time I try that maneuver it feels like my throat is full of razor blades. So even besides the extra phlegm from my sinuses, I can’t cough up more than a fraction of what I generally need to, to avoid infection. So unless I am lucky, after the cold is over I will need to take antibiotics and hope I don’t get pneumonia. My phlegm is already a slightly weird color.

This is why there’s a big sign on my door telling sick people to stay out. But when I venture out to a huge conference, I can’t protect myself.

This is also why I can’t stand the idea that when anyone worries about germs it must be all in their head. Sometimes yeah. But sometimes they have a weak immune system. Or weak lung muscles. Or lung disease. Or so little energy that even a minor bug knocks them flat. I’ve got two out of four all the time, three out of four sometimes, and four out of four if I have to go on Prednisone.

I still remember having to lock my wheelchair brakes and refuse to leave a conference when a guy who promised me otherwise earlier tried to force me onto the van with a woman with a respiratory bug. Because it somehow made the luggage situation more convenient. And he sat there and screamed at me but I held my ground until they put me on the other van. Because I knew it was life or death.

That guy didn’t seem to think that having pneumonia, a partially collapsed lung, and Prednisone-related immune suppression, was enough reason to want to not get a cold/flu/whatever she had on top of it all. To him, I was in the way of his perfect luggage scheme, was probably “just” germ-phobic, and didn’t really have anything that serious going on. And there’s plenty more where he came from. Like the woman who took me in a car with her, knowing all this, while she was sick, and then told me that since I didn’t have AIDS it didn’t matter. (facepalm)

So if you do have the ability to take precautions, please take them. If not for your own sake, for the sake of someone you might pass on a bug to. No precaution is perfect but they at least help. I’d never hold it against someone unable to take these sorts of precautions, but for those who can, please do.