Kvelve's Comments: Man vs. Cold

In this corner, weighing in at just a few corn dogs south of 285 pounds, the Plains Pain, the Big Sky Brawler (ok, years ago), the Legend (in his own mind)…Kvelve!

And in this corner, tipping the scales at somewhere in the neighborhood of an atom, the Mucous Madman , the Vicious Virus, the Airborne Assassin….Cold Flu!

Gentleman and thing….let’s get ready to rumble.

So it goes, usually once a year if the promoters can pull it off or if germs continue their wicked ways.

Yup, it hit me again this year. Right on time 10 days before Christmas. Just enough to take the shine off my outdoor lights and make sure the Norwegian meatballs don’t taste as good as they should.

You would think all the years I spent working around radiation discharging things like X-rays and Cat Scans (no, MRIs do NOT emit radiation, they are magnetic) no living virus or germ could exist in my oversize bodzonia.

I’m so radioactive after 40 years I haven’t bought a light bulb in decades. I just glow.

How could a thing you can’t see with the naked or even fully clothed eye and can’t be weighed by anything less than a skyscraper-size bank of computers and electronic scales cause such havoc?

Oh, in the end, after a five- or six-day fight in which I usually end up whimpering under the blankets and look like a zombie having a really bad hair day, I recover and return to the land of the living.

Along the way I cough until, as was the case this time, my abdominal muscles scream in pain just knowing the next cough is on the way. My nose takes on a disgusting chapped red sheen. Actually broke a rib coughing one year. These germs don’t play around.

They are the ultimate sneaky slim balls. The kings of below the belt punches, the Snidely Whiplashes of cruelty. Yet they survive to thrive again.

This year, like all the years past, I broke out the heavy armor. Nyquil Cold and Flu….Zi-Cam (although that, I found out, is to be taken at first sign of a cold), Esther C, dressed warm, drank lots of fluid.

Even pulled out the chicken noodle soup, mostly because nothing else sounded like it would taste good much less scald some germs.

Tried my Dad’s tried and true formula to kick a cold, Contac and a shot of whiskey before bed. Nothing. Seemed to work for him but he was from the Greatest Generation, a group of guys who gave Hitler the middle finger and kicked his behind off the planet.

In desperation I even hauled out Grandma Inga’s patented “cure”…grease the bottom of your feet with Vick’s Vapo-rub, put on some heavy socks and crawl in.

And yeah, I know about the Vapo-rub on the neck with the hand towel scarf…nothing was working.

But now, two weeks later, the smell of Vapo-rub has finally left the building.

Woke up one morning during the battle and suddenly thought, “hey, I feel a bit better.”

What day is it? Did we have the Election yet? Have we landed on Mars? Does Congressman Nadler still wear his belt just below his armpits?

You know, I lost some time there being sick and all.

Chuck “Kvelve” Bandel is a reporter for the Mineral Independent and Clark Fork Valley Press. You can look for his “Kvelve’s Comments” column weekly.