Man am I tired. I haven’t written. Haven’t felt like writing. Mostly I just sit and cough. And cough. And cough. And cough.

Apparently, or at least the word on the street from the fine doctor at Kaiser Permanente willing to diagnose me by telephone, the old barking cough that scared many a Victorian mother has never gone away. A virus might get driven underground by good health and good treatment and vaccines. But, then, it can rise again in a whole other host of hosts.

In other words, the croup, which I associate with novels and stories of sickly families and Dickensian tragedy, is currently making a come back in a large way around Northern California. Instead of crying babies under a towel sobbing through a cloud of steam, it’s old folks like me coughing up a lung all night long.

For me, croup is Minnie May not dying and Anne getting to hang out with Diana again, despite having gotten her tanked on currant wine.

Well it used to be that. Now, it’s a pain in the ass cough that kept me up nights with a heaving wheezing chest that now lingers into scratchy annoyance. I’m pretty sure it’s not from my being overfed on potatoes and my bad hygiene, like this old-timey article asserts. Or “protein poisoning.”

Night after night coughing and wheezing is exhausting.

What I have learned most of all, is I better not get anything terminal any time soon. Illness frazzles me. I’ll be saving my pennies for a nice, permanent vacation to Switzerland, if the worst ever happens. In fact, if this coughing doesn’t stop, I might have to off myself soon.

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