Monday 31 Oct 2022

Coming off a cold that started manifesting maybe last Friday when I wondered if a sneeze indicated an allergy to honey. Nope, by Saturday afternoon late it was clearly a cold, and I didn't know what to expect.

I've not had a cold for about ten years, for which I've credited my regular annual flu shot every fall, and to my scrupulously wiping the handles of a shopping cart (which to me is actually a walker) before I use it in any store, and to pretty faithfully washing my hands when I come in the door from any excursion.

By Saturday evening it was a wipeout, which continued through Sunday. I never had any fever with it. My remedies, self-medicated, amoxycillin that are always on hand for me to take four capsules an hour before going to the dentist, to protect my heart valve from infection, as a precaution because my father's death was brought on by his catching a cold during the summer 1993 annual family visit, being taken to hospital early the next week, and dying a couple days later apparently from infection getting to his replacement heart valve. One coricidin, a little red cold tablet that has pain reliever and antihistamine, about once every twelve or so hours. Suck on one of those cold-eeze zinc tablets several times a day. Drink hot tea with lemon and maybe honey. Drink coffee, decaf if late in the day or, as this morning at midnight, I want to get back to sleep after a couple hours up.

My neti pot, did I mention my neti pot? Clears the nasal cavity for a bit and makes for free breathing. Warm water with a measure of salt, 've used it twice now.

All the cold discomfort is gone now, I don't know whether it's real or the still-active effects of the coricidin; tomorrow I may skip the coricidin and see if the cold returns. Residual cough, which I work to prevent by clearing my throat soon as I sense a cough coming on. Like to prevent, because abdomen muscles are extremely sore and sensitive from so much coughing Saturday and Sunday.

It's all good. Today we went to the church and picked up from the refrigerator, the extremely generous take-out suppers that someone so kindly packed for us because we missed Sunday morning worship and the annual Sunday evening pig roast. Appetite is more or less returned - - breakfast a cup of vegetable soup, noon dinner some of the to-go box that we retrieved from the refrigerator at church, supper a small cup of cottage cheese.

Cottage cheese - - I only buy large curd 4% milk fat cottage cheese. Sometimes it's too thin and milky and I take that brand off my list. Last week I bought a carton of the Freedom brand sold at the Commissary, and it's excellent, just like I remember from my childhood. We ate cottage cheese from time to time, always supper, always a cereal bowl-full with milk and sugar. Yankees once were astonished, said they ate cottage cheese with salad, maybe salt and pepper. I like cottage cheese my way or you can keep it. But I have to be sparse with it because, as I've told here before, long years ago, it would have been about 1980, I used cottage cheese as a diet. It ended up with a terrible, terribly painful kidney stone. Linda took my pain rather casually: the phone rang at our house in Pennsylvania, and the next door neighbor (wife of a Navy commander friend who eventually made vice admiral, they were RC and had five children when we knew them) and the neighbor told Linda, "Tom's lying in the back yard rolling around in the grass." Linda said, "Oh, he's just passing a kidney stone."

I've had a few more kidney stones since then. My first one was maybe fall 1966: a new Navy lieutenant commander, we were stationed in Washington and lived in Northern Virginia. This excruciating pain suddenly came on, on my right lower back. I knew I was dying, but what the hell, eh? Linda drove me to the Naval Dispensary at the old Main Navy Building on the mall downtown Washington. The Navy medics treated me kindly, diagnosed the problem as a kidney stone being passed, gave me a shot of something that made life so dreamy that it was worth having the kidney stone, and some pills of the same stuff to take at home later. When we arrived home that morning, my son Joe, who was six or nearly six, sat and read to me from the little books that I read to him and Malinda at night. It was a most happy and peaceful morning of missing work and feeling much loved. The stone passed, as all of mine have, uneventfully except for the pain.

For lifetime, I need to mind the amount of cheese I eat, but I do sometimes find myself getting careless.

Today: church, Tyndall AFB vision clinic to have Linda's new eyeglasses adjusted. Three hour nap after noon dinner.

Ship passing 7H at 6:46 this morning, apparently Louise Aurbach 453x70, arriving with general cargo.

RSF&PTL