My Immune System is in Overdrive or How to Survive Daytime TV

Apparently, my immune system is in tip top shape because it's streaming snot and inflaming the little cavities where my tonsils used to be in order to dispell one of the worst head colds and sore throats I've had in a long time. It seems this virulent cold is easily transmitted and if not nailed on the head by R & R reoccurs to infect everyone around me. So in the absence of a modicum of creativity while I behave in a very manly way, complaining, moaning, downing copious amounts of vitamins and Sudafed (which doesn't work by the way) I am now reduced to wiping my nose with toilet paper as the tissues have run out and I can't drag my acheing arse out to replace them. After three days bonding with my couch and a very comfy doona, I still feel like shit. So where's the cure? Apparently, because colds are hundreds of different viruses, it's not viable to come up with a cure so scientists are working on the immune response - the snotbox effect.

Personally, I think its a conspiracy on the part of drug companies and the medical fraternity to keep people sick so that they purchase boxes of the cold and flu preparations available over the counter and to force them into the surgery to be told the obvious "You have a virus, theres nothing I can do." This is where I have to go today to procure a Dr's cert because I've had two days off adjacent to a weekend. A rule stipulated in my own sick leave policy.

I snookered myself as key workplace policy maker by ensuring that our gen X and Y workforce, which seems to think sickies are a right and should be utilised at all costs, procured a Doctor's certificate if they had a sick day either side of a weekend or more than two consecutive days off. The little blighters thwarted that one by taking no more than 2 days or spreading them through the week with illnesses such as, and I kid you not: haemerroids, back injuries which miraculously disappeared after a day in bed, lack of sleep, the sniffles which again miraculously disappeared after a day off work, a broken fingernail (poor baby couldn't type), 'allergic reaction' to what I don't know and didn't dare to ask, Thrush and one particular employee has more gastro-intestinal infections than a Rawandan amid an Ebola epidemic and for all her 90 kilos, should be thin as a whip!

Another delight I've experienced whilst rubbing on the Vicks is daytime TV. And if it wasn't for brief conversations with my overseas bloggers to break up the day, I may have employed a brick to cause serious screen damage. Between Oprah and Dr Phil are the daytime serials, Days of Our Lives (yes the hourglass is still pouring the sands of time) and The Young and the Restless who are now middle aged and less tetchy but still managing to have affairs with each other. Then there are the He Cooks She Cooks, Heweys Cooking Adventures and a myriad of furry costumed children's entertainers singing silly songs about going to the shops and fairies. Needless to say, the DVD hire has been on the boil but now I'm down to the 3 day rental section and reviewing films I've seen before. The Hannibal series has copped a hammering as has Lord of the Rings except I doze off during the battle scenes . . . so today it's a toss up between cleaning out my bathroom cupboard which is always a discovery tour in itself or revisiting Terminator. And unlike Arnie, I'm hopeful that after three days alone, my cold wil NOT be back!