Man cold debate can shake a marriage to its core

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/01/2018 (3019 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Welcome to the third day of 2018, kids.

I am reasonably confident that, unlike 2017, this will be an outstanding year, at least until U.S. President Donald Trump fires off his first unintelligible tweet, thereby causing the will to live to begin leaking out of our ears.

What? He’s already fired off a bunch of mind-numbing tweets, some of which contained correctly spelled words?

OK, in that case, I suggest we should immediately hunker down in our basements and hang on until 2019 pokes its head over the horizon.

Also, we should probably wear tinfoil hats to block the mind-control rays emanating from the White House and, most likely, the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa. Better safe than sorry.

But that’s not today’s medically important point. Today’s point is 2018 is here and, what with all the excitement over the brutal, soul-destroying cold snap and the World Junior Hockey Championship, I suspect most of you are champing at the bit to hear how I spent my Christmas holidays.

You will no doubt be pleased to learn that I spent most of the past couple of weeks lying on the couch in the den watching sports highlights on our big-screen TV while trying to shake off the persistent symptoms of the killer man cold/flu from Hell.

I do not wish to whine in an annoying manner, but my recovery from this terrifying illness was complicated by the fact that, on Christmas Day, my beloved spouse, She Who Must Not Be Named, also came down with what I assume is the female equivalent of the man cold.

What this means is that, since Christmas, my wife and I have spent every single day debating a topic that poses a greater threat to modern marriages than failing to refill the empty toilet-paper dispenser in the main bathroom, namely: Which one of us is sicker?

You are going to have a hard time believing this but, due to the fact she could barely stand upright for 30 seconds and repeatedly coughed up most of her internal organs on the carpet, my wife felt her symptoms were worse than mine.

The point is that for several days, there we were, lying helplessly on the two couches in our den, discussing the relative intensity of our various man cold symptoms.

If you do not understand how a debate of this nature can shake a marriage to its core, then I will have to assume the following:

● You have never had a spouse;

● You have never experienced the sort of cold symptoms wherein the only way you can brush your teeth is by squirting toothpaste directly into your mouth and then, while lying under the covers in your bed, rubbing your face back and forth on one of the pillows, preferably the one belonging to your spouse.

Out of journalistic fairness, I will point out that the last column I wrote in 2017 was a heartfelt piece wherein I sang the praises of Dr. Kyle Sue, an assistant professor of family medicine at Memorial University of Newfoundland.

Those of you whose brains are not coated in a thick layer of mucus will recall that Dr. Sue made headlines recently by revealing the results of a scientific study that concluded the man cold is, in fact, a real thing, and that men are not exaggerating when they claim to be experiencing far worse symptoms than women.

This all dates back to caveman days and the fact that men have weaker immune systems than women because their bodies contain things like (a) testosterone and (b) extra-large convenience-store burritos.

Getting back to the situation in my den, there we were, my wife lying on the newish couch, while I was stretched out on the mouse couch, which is the old ratty pull-out sofa that apparently has been serving as HQ for the recent mouse invasion wherein plucky rodents pop their little heads out from under the cushions at random intervals to see whether I have left toast crumbs or tiny bits of bacon strewn in my wake.

I tried to explain to my wife that, scientifically speaking, it was impossible for her to experience more severe cold symptoms because she is — and there is no denying this fact — a woman.

Surprisingly, she was not sympathetic to this argument, despite its foundation in recent scientific research.

“Cough, cough, sniff, snort, pleesh bwing me a cup of tea, shweetheart?” my wife would ask, snorting loudly into a handful of tissues in an obvious attempt to gain sympathy.

In reply, I would roll over and frown at her to convey the notion that I had seen through her ploy.

“Mebbe whilsh your inda kishen making toasht, you could bwing me shumg gingerale, huddybunch!” I would grunt, pointing out that she still had the strength to knit whereas I could no longer operate the TV remote-control without resorting to Jedi mind-control powers.

“I’b too shick to ged ub,” my wife would grumble.

“Bud I habba man cowd!” I would bravely point out, somehow finding the strength to remind my wife that I had been a brave little soldier and had kept the whining to a bare minimum, unless I really needed some chicken noodle soup and, possibly, a glass of orange juice.

Anyway, you will be glad to hear that, despite being as weak as a (bad word) kitten, I have dragged my aching and pasty body back to the office to write today’s heart-tugging column, which means my ailing wife is at home, lying on the good couch.

Sure, I could have stuck around to bring her fresh boxes of tissues and hot cups of tea, but I felt the manly thing to do would be to let her suffer in silence. I’m confident science will back me up on that.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca