My Scary Halloween Story!

Saturday morning I woke from a nightmare in which my brother Frank appeared to me and announced he'd been replaced by the Euro. Before evaporating, he remarked I looked feverish and ought to drink plenty of fluids. I rose to a weekend in the throes of a virus. After all the nostologic problems I have dealt with this summer and fall I was eager to undertake a normal illness, but this was a rhino-virus and I did not want a big horn growing on my nose --not again, anyway. It promised to be a virus from hell so, like most guys, I tried to ignore it. I coughed a little. I refrained from smoking my pipe. I drank beer.

Sunday I coughed a lot. I had chills. I got afraid of my bed. My brother reentered my delirium and said I had nose horns. I asked why he thought that was and he said, "This is a world that operates largely by coincidences, yet we must mistrust all of them." Then he rose through the ceiling, which is really just showing off. I got up and sat at the kitchen table all night long, reading Bertrand Russell and running out of beer. By 8:30 a.m. I was on the phone to Dr. Lee, my GP for 15 years who, for some supernatural reason, still looks 12-years old. He's 10 minutes down the road.

Dr. Lee prescribed a huge bottle of codeine cough syrup. It worked fine, suppresses the cough reflex.  I slept Monday night and had a healthy appetite the next day. What escaped me until later was codeine also suppresses other reflexes further down. So Tuesday I quit taking it. Now it is late Wednesday night and I have learned something no man is really meant to know: how full of poop I really am.

It has been a frightening Halloween. Norma cut this year's Jack-o-lantern out of construction paper and I drew a face that, despite the fact that my wife has begun coughing this evening, I hope expresses some cautious optimism. Best Halloween wishes to all.