The Minnesota Farm Woman

We got home yesterday after spending a fun few days with friends in Las Vegas. Besides some good memories, the only thing I came home with was a nasty cold. I really was certain that I would come home with something, but was hoping that it would be a million dollars rather than this. Airports, airplanes, and any casino in Las Vegas are like giant Petri dishes of germs from all corners of the world. This cold is so bad that it is most certainly a man-cold. I am self diagnosing, but I have been a nurse for 35 years, so I have a good instinct about these things.  My friends describe man-colds as something that their husbands get, with stuffy heads, coughing, whining, and body aches and pains worse than anyone has ever had before.  They want to be served hot soup, grilled cheese sandwiches, chips, and perhaps a cold beer to ease their discomfort. My man is not someone who complains when he gets sick. In fact, HE can be quite the opposite. He almost died about 15 years ago after getting food poisoning from eating bad oysters and although burning up with fever, kept saying, “No, I’m fine,” and asked for nothing but saltine crackers and red Kool-aid for two days. When he finally dragged himself to the urgent care center, they told him it was lucky that he came in when he did. Last summer, while I was dogsitting in the next town over,  I got a call from HIM requesting some “really strong flu medicine”.  Again, he gave his usual “I’ll be fine” speech while burning up with fever. Even though he refused to have his temperature taken, I knew it was high by my superpower instinct and my hand on his forehead. I made a clinic appointment, he cancelled it. I remembered a tick bite a couple of weeks before, and he was certain it wasn’t that. He ate the super-duper cold/flu medicine like candy, and I threatened him with the side effects such as liver failure,  kidney failure and/or death. Defeated, and too sick to argue any more, he finally went in, only to find out he indeed  had one of those nasty tick-borne diseases, and a round of antibiotics did the trick. I didn’t say, “I told you so!”, but I sure was thinking it.  So, here I am, sick with this man-cold, huddled in bed  under a quilt and the electric mattress pad is on the warmest setting. There’s no cool hand on my fevered brow.  Nobody has offered any hot soup or cool drinks, but when I got up to get a drink of water, HE did offer me a leftover hot dog. *sigh* I’ll be fine. Really, I will.