Lesson #1: If you visit relatives you haven’t seen in almost two decades, and your sweet dear grandmother says something like “I’m sorry your grandfather and uncle aren’t here, but they just went to the emergency room because they’ve been suffering from this horrible cold…” then you should immediately do the following:
1. Peel off your skin, and incinerate it immediately.
2. Soak the remainder of your body in a vat of chlorine bleach for 1 hour to disinfect, and
3. Drain the vat, fill it with pure Lysol, and soak in that for one more hour to finish disinfecting.
If you don’t do this (you poor, poor bastard) then the remaining lessons you’re about to learn are going to be, well, a bit unpleasant.
Lesson #2: Three days of sleep deprivation caused by the symptoms of the uber-cold you experience as a result of not heeding the warnings of Lesson #1 are so much fun. This won’t be a wimpy avian flu thing, no sir! What you will experience is a full-blown upper respiratory extravanganza. You won’t have time to sleep when your body is demanding to cough, sneeze, refuse the clear fluids you try to ingest and expel as many fluids as possible, all simultaneously, 24/7.
Sleep deprivation due to illness really does do wonders to your attitude, outlook on life, and psyche. And it makes you such a joy to be around, too! Especially during the holidays. Only a skinless, Clorox-and-Lysol-bathed You will be far more personable and approachable.
Lesson #3: Drug makers love acetaminophen. If they could put it in candy and sell it to kids on the street, they would. And they sure as hell throw it into every conceivable cold remedy you can buy. Therefore, if you want to experience any relief from your cold whatsoever, be resigned to the fact that you will unintentionally overdose on this drug, even if you had no intentions whatsoever of taking acetaminophen at all. The only way to avoid it is to simply follow the decontamination procedure outlined in Lesson1, or suffer the symptoms of your uber-cold. I assure you that you will wish you had picked decontamination.
Lesson #4: If you’re sick, just don’t fly. No really, don’t, even if it’s the only way to get back home. And I’m not saying this because flying while ill with a contagious uber-cold is inconsiderate and will likely spread the same cold to everyone on the flight (au contraire, you will be feeling so miserable by now that you’ll consider 100+ people being forced to experience your misery in the near future a bonus). No, I’m saying this because Airplane Ear is by far the most excruciating, insanity-causing, agonizing pain you will ever experience. It will make any misery you’ve experienced thus far seem like a walk in the park… assuming the pain allows you to remember what a walk in the park entails. Seriously, you WILL want to stab knives into your ears and carve them out of your head, and if you happen to catch brain matter too, well, so much the better.
And that’s only the ascent portion of the flight. The descent portion, now, that’s where the fun begins. You know how every so often, someone will mysteriously go bezerk during a flight in an “air rage” incident, and an air marshall will be forced to gun them down? I swear, the real cause of all of these incidents has to be the severe, insanity-causing pain of Airplane Ear. Especially since airline pilots like to spend a good hour descending their planes, bringing them down eeeever so slowly and gently, causing you to scream in agony as you feel every millimeter of cabin pressure change.
And don’t assume the fun stops there! You’ll still have lingering hearing loss and ear pressure issues you’ll have to deal with once you’ve managed to finally kill the pain. You will know how entertaining it is for a doctor to look into your ears, startle, and then have to scream at the top of his lungs “SIR, IT LOOKS LIKE YOU BURST SOME CAPILLARIES AND BLED INTO YOUR INNER EAR!!” while you hear nothing and the ringing in your ears drives you crazy.
Fortunately, if you actually survive the ordeal and make it to the ground, you can go into any airport gift shop and easily overdose on acetaminophen (see Lesson #3). The loss of hearing should subside in a week or two, and giant horsepills you have to take to try and force a reset of your ear pressure (I’ll take photos as soon as I can) are mildly amusing.
The Most Important Lesson of All: All you had to do to avoid this was burn your skin and bathe in caustic chemicals. But nooo, you had to do this the hard way, didnt’t you?
