The Not So Common Cold

I had almost forgotten how truly ugly a common head cold can be. It has been quite a long time since I had one.  I can't say that I've missed having a cold, especially now that I have one, but I did kind of like the idea of getting a cold, because this would mean that my immune system had backed off enough to let a common illness through, which would mean, theoretically anyway, that it had stopped attacking healthy nerve structures for the time being. The mental mistake one makes is that those nerve systems that have already been damaged and have been causing their various pains and troubles will somehow be 'well' again. Not so. The damage is done, and is not 'undone' by a cold. The result is that the symptoms of the cold itself -- body aches and congestion and sniffling and coughing -- exacerbate the existing neurologic damage already done by MS. If your neck was stiff and sore to  begin with, it is now stiffer and sore-er. If you were already fatigued, you are now exhausted. If you couldn't sleep well because of the pain at night, now the situation is even worse, because you cannot breathe at night, and you cannot stop coughing. In short, the joy of having a cold, as it pertains to the disease process of MS, is wholly theoretical. On top of this, we know that the repressed immune system does not do a very good job in fighting off common illnesses, such as the common cold, and so one cannot help but wonder how uncommonly long this common cold will last.