When fighting a cold, don’t text while dreaming

All week long, I’ve been fighting a cold. It’s annoying when you have a list of things you’d like to accomplish in a timely manner, but all you can manage is lots of tea, water and several naps.

For once, I was prepared and had several bags of chicken broth in my freezer. It was my attempt to have single servings of soup ready to microwave. I’m always grateful when I can uncover something of substance hiding in there. When I’m not feeling well, the last thing I want to do is go shopping.

You can learn a lot about yourself when you’re under the weather. I learned I can nod off at my desk with my fingers still on the keyboard. I learned that if I suddenly wake up from an impromptu nap, it’s hard to tell if it’s 5 a.m. or 5 p.m., and that it’s best not to move around too much until the correct time has been established. I learned that if I fall asleep while reading a book, I need to reread the past couple of pages because I have a tendency to further the storyline in my dreams.

My sister texted me one morning, which woke me from a deep sleep. Apparently, I texted her back in a less than coherent manner. When I called her later that day, we had a pretty good laugh over my attempt to reply while not quite awake. I couldn’t really tell if I was dreaming or texting, but apparently I can do both at the same time, just not very well.

A few years ago, I managed to get a monster of a cold. Those are the times when you find out who your true friends are. I called one up, and she brought me a supply of cold medicine, Gatorade, tissues and some food to get me through the week. It was actually enough supplies to last me for a month, but I wasn’t about to complain.

With the outbreak of the coronavirus making the news now, it got me thinking about the time my brother came home from Taiwan for a visit. SARS was making its way around the globe, and even though he felt fine, he waited a couple of days before visiting Mom and Dad at the nursing home, just to make sure he wasn’t carrying any bad germs.

There have been a lot of people I know who have gotten bad colds this season. Some waited too long for it to go away and ended up in the hospital. I know I don’t want that to happen to me, so for now I’m sticking with my plan of plenty of liquids, plenty of sleep and no texting while dreaming.