Eventually, we all suffer winter’s plague

I can tell by your red nose that you are still feeling the effects of a winter flu or cold. That hacking cough. Aching joints. Congestion and yet a runny nose and eyes. Your nose has to be blown or wiped at intervals more often than television commercials. After a while, Kleenex feels like sandpaper.

I am sick of it. I’m on my second version of the winter plague.

But then I live in one of the most disease-filled homes in Spokane. Cold and flu bugs come in my door every day at 5 p.m. My wife is a nurse at a local hospital.

Hospitals are where the sickest people go. Those sick people don’t usually come into the hospital with a minor case of the sniffles; they crawl into the hospital with the full-blown kick-butt flu. Swine and nonswine. Seasonal flu, bird flu, H6B9 flu, Influenza A or C and debilitating mutants of those maladies. Wheezing and coughing.

My house-husband duties suffer during these bouts with the flu.

Vacuuming is out of the question because it stirs up dust, which aggravates my congestion. And I can’t dump the trash because I get the chills if I go outside. I can’t even push the START button on the dishwasher because my joints hurt so badly. Some WD-40 sprayed lightly on the TV remote loosened the buttons so that I could comfort myself with television surfing while eating chicken soup and dozing off for a much needed nap, a key to healing.

But my little Typhoid Mary gets home from the hospital each day, laden with germs and viruses. I can almost hear the germs thanking her as they jump off when she comes into our house out of the harsh winter weather.

My wife had apparently had her fill of sick people for the day, because there is not much charity in her heart for me, the husband for whom she has vowed to care “for better or worse.” And I am worse.

She marches into the living room and surveys the mess which is not my fault (see above).

She picks up the empty chicken soup bowls and donut wrappers, then carries them into the kitchen where she throws all the dirty dishes in the dishwasher that is inoperable for me (see above).

As she rearranges the other items in the living room, she grumbles, “How’d the television remote get this oil on it?”

“I spilled some greasy chicken soup when I sneezed,” (not exactly as above).

However, my wife is not the only germ and virus carrier that enters our home.

Our toddler grandchildren come and spend the afternoon with us on occasion. It is hard to believe that those cherubic darlings are full of the most virulent germs known to humankind.

Even more troubling is that a loving 3-year-old would cuddle in your lap and then sneeze directly into your face. You can put the little darling down and hold your breath until you are able to stick your head into a barrel of sheep dip, but even that is not going to protect you from getting the latest bug being passed around the children of the Lilac City.

Those of you who have stayed flu-free this winter can wipe down everything, sink knobs, door handles, keyboards, whatever, but short of hiding out on a lonely tropical island, you’re gonna get laid low by that nasty virus/germ that will find a home in your formerly invincible body.

You may even know the exact time that the germ broke through your defenses, like say when a baby sneezes in your face. The painful symptoms of the sickness won’t hit you for a few days, but until then you are just a dead man walking while the germs incubate in your pod.