I Have A Cold

Reflections on contagion of viruses and ideas that are sickening.

Oh my gosh. It's been a while. My old friend, my nemesis. Cough. Cough. My older sister Alison referred to my robust coughing by screaming, with malicious glee, "Feeding time at the zoo!"  This is because I sounded like a seal or barking like a sea lion. I have a cold again today. Alison never let me live it down.

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COVID changed my relationship to colds. I've had a chronic cough on and off for years. I've written articles about it. At the beginning of residency training, it was so bad that I had post-tussive emesis—that is, coughing so hard you throw up.

That went on for nine months. I got a cardiothoracic CT scan to evaluate what turned out to be a postnasal drip. Before the pandemic, a cough was Embarrassing and annoying, especially when it was non-infectious. But for a long time, we kind of casually infected each other with upper respiratory viruses, which had some relationship with our biology that made…