Colds were the plague of my life, ever since I was a kid (I am now 53 years old). Every time I caught a cold – which did not take much for me to do – I would get a case of the so-called pseudocroup. Normally that would subside in a few years, but this condition was part of my life even up to my adult years.
A cold would always start with a lot of pain in my throat, swollen tonsils and difficulty swallowing or speaking. It would usually last for one or two weeks and then change into a runny nose, my nasal passages totally stopped. It would take a lot of nose drops (which have, by the way, ruined my sense of smell) to handle it. My nose could stay runny and stopped for 8 or 10 weeks. During such a period I would also contract bronchitis. All that coughing at nights week after week was very painful and tiring, and I still had to go to work. By the time that bronchitis was reasonably healed, a dry cough would follow and it was nothing to be sneezed at. Talking on the phone was out of the question for instance, because it would bring on a fit of coughing that lasted for several minutes. Tears would gush forth. At its worst that cough would wreck my throat which resulted in a new case of bronchitis. It could take me up to four months to get rid of the dry cough.
The great improvement came on my first Summer Course in 2001. At that time I caught a severe cold and I am sure I caused a lot of disturbance to my room mates at night with that cough. After that my colds were markedly lighter and nowadays I hardly catch colds. The slight colds that do get me are like light Summer breezes by comparison. They pass in a few days and I do not even get any cough.
Now do you see why I am so happy? I am so eager to see what will be my next improvement…
Carina Lindblom