It’s gorgeous here in Missouri — temps in the 70s, blue skies, sunny, flowers blooming, the trees forming walls of green. There are vast tracts of land here where you can’t see the ground because the tree canopy is so dense. In the spring, the air itself almost seems to have a green glow from all the crazy photosynthesizing going on. I love Missouri . I can’t imagine living anywhere else. (Except in the winter and the summer.)
But I can’t enjoy it because I have a stinking spring cold. A hacking up my lungs, sore throat, stomach hurting, miserable, feeling like crap cold. I have been coughing nonstop for weeks. My son and daughter have been coughing for more than a month.
And now I’m reading that whooping cough is coming back. According to the CDC, before the introduction of the pertussis vaccine, the U.S. suffered through about 175,000 cases of whooping cough each year. We used to have maybe 3,000 cases a year when the pertussis vaccine became available, but that’s changed. We had more than 27,000 reported cases in 2010, and I wonder how many unreported cases there were. What the heck has happened?
I don’t think this could be pertussis because my kids got it, and I know my daughter at the least got her booster about 3 years ago. But it makes you wonder every time you get a bad cough. I don’t feel safe around babies — what if I got one sick before it had all of it’s shots? I don’t understand why I’m not getting boosters.
Why are spring colds worse than winter colds? Is it because you’re generally depressed and annoyed all winter long anyway, and the contrast isn’t as great? Is it that the super bugs, the really mean ones, survived the winter when the weaker bugs died, and they are out for blood? I don’t know, but all those birds singing are really p—ing me off.
alisaacarter
Alisa A. Carter 