Turnabout and the Common Cold

            Turnabout is fair play. That’s what one of my physician mentors, Ken O’Neill, told me. In essence, sharp, witty replies are acceptable, even when they flash some teeth.
            Last week a patient of mine said, “Doc, your hair is turning gray!”
            “Really?”
            I was stunned. In 55 years I had never observed this fine detail. How great the eyesight of this man!
            As I considered the implications of aging, the world began to spin about me, ever faster, until I grew nauseous. I envisioned myself on exhibit in The Louvre Museum, one more prized antiquity on display. I had nearly fallen from my rocker when my patient stretched forth his arm and settled me with a touch. It was then I understood I was seated in the very presence of Moses, whose eyes were keen until the age of 120. Moses, himself, the lawgiver, who raised his staff and parted the Red Sea, who covered his face lest he blind his people with the shekinah glory of God. Moses! The same ancient leader who brought forth the Ten Commandments, carved in stone.
            “Are you sure?” I asked him. (I was out of line to doubt him, but he didn’t reprimand me.)
            “You’re really gray, Doc. Look at your old badge.”
            The photo ID pinned to my coat was made of papyrus. The name inscribed upon it was mine—I could read the ancient cursive language—but the image was of a youth, perhaps of Middle Eastern descent: his hair was dark.
            “My badge got switched,” I explained. “That’s the second time that’s happened this week!”
            One professional friend of mine with a silvering pate has been the lucky recipient of the same keen insight from his patients: “Doc, you’re turning gray!” “You’re looking pretty gray yourself!” he says, with sharp repartee, because turnabout is fair play. Turnabout is like jujitsu, flipping an opponent using their own strength.
            Once upon a time, when saber-tooth tigers and mammoths roamed the land, drug company representatives were given easy access to my medical office. They brought samples of their new (expensive) medications and lunches to the office in exchange for the attention of the doctors, NPs, and PAs. The drug reps, as they were called, were business folk, an ancient species, so it was thought, halfway between Homo erectus and Australopithecus afarensis. A science background was recommended for their job but not required.
            There’s a useful class of medications, known as proton pump inhibitors, that reduce stomach acid, the most well-known in the USA being Prilosec. A similar product is called Protonix. One unfortunate drug rep wanted to know if I had any further questions for him about Protonix.
            “Sure,” I said. “What’s a proton?”
            “What’s a proton?” His cheeks blazed like an ember in a gust of wind, but his eyes turned glassy, and his lips moved in silence like a fish. He wrote my question on his tablet. “I will find out! And I’ll get back to you.” Then he swam away.
            Four other drug reps were selling competing products of the same class. I asked each of them, in turn: “What’s a proton?” Only one had a partial answer.
            My wisecrack was “fair play,” but I won’t do it again. Five times I lashed at these sales reps doing their jobs. They were the only people around me with no recourse if insulted. I couldn’t vent my frustrations with difficult medical decision-making on my nurses or my patients. Did I think I might feel happier or smarter if I made the drug reps look foolish?
            “What’s a proton?” I asked. Chemists devote themselves to the study of this single subatomic particle, the most foundational building block in the universe. What’s a proton? It’s the positively charged part at the heart of every atom.

*          *          *

            I was sick for sixteen days with the common cold. This is day seventeen, the first day my cough is mostly gone and the first day I have any wit. For the second time this year, I have missed an entire week of work due to this ubiquitous disease, as widespread as protons and gray hair.
            What good could ever come from infection with the common cold? It has no panache, like COVID.
            “What was wrong with you?” my patients ask. “Are you okay?”
            “I had bronchitis. Not flu. Not COVID. Not RSV. I had the common cold. I coughed a lot, especially at night, and slept rotten. I couldn’t work, lest I give this infection to others. Nothing I did made me feel any better or improve any quicker.”
            “Now you know how I feel!” they say.

*          *          *

            A virus is not technically a living thing since it can’t reproduce on its own. Getting sick with a virus is like walking down a quiet path, stumbling into the stones, then getting pummeled by lifeless rocks that somehow rise into the air and rain down in torrents, exacting their mindless revenge. I stand at last from the stone bed where I lay for over two weeks. I scrub the dirt from my wounds, then begin another circuit walking down the common pathway. Surely, I will pass this way again.
            Wearing a mask at work, while sucking on a lozenge and sniffling, I asked a patient who shared my malady, “Can you think of any good from this illness?”
            “It slows you down,” she said.
            I added, “You also get to watch the world go on just fine without you.”
            My wife has used her recent illnesses to fuel positive action. She spelled out for me all the details I must know, should she die prematurely. (Caring for dogs, birds, and rabbits top the list.) Perhaps it’s time for me to make my list for her.
            After two weeks of illness, I awoke today without paroxysms of coughing. The heaviness in my chest had lifted. I was not quite back to “normal,” but compared with where I had been, I felt energized. How good it seemed to live an ordinary day! I awoke with hopes of things I might do. The daily chores that awaited me did not seem overwhelming.

*          *          *

            The Common Cold visited me for two weeks. She sneaked up on me, took hold of my chest from behind, dragged me to the ground, and whispered in my ear: “As long as I hold on and squeeze your chest, you must slow down.” I did not know how long she could hold on, and I wondered if she might be her vile sister, Pulmonary Embolism, in disguise. But she wasn’t.
            On the seventeenth day I stood, broke free of her grip and flung her to the ground behind me. There she lay in the grass, fuming, promising she’d be back. I limped away from her, sped up to a jog, turned over my shoulder, and shouted back at her, “Better luck next time, CC! You lost your grip again, and I will slow down no longer. Compared to where I was, I feel like I’m going faster and with more purpose than before!”
            The Common Cold flicked her hair out of her eyes and cursed me under her breath. She arose from her bed of grass and stones, brushed herself off, and stormed away. “I’ll be back,” she said.
            “And I’ll be ready.” Turnabout is fair play.

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