My
husband has been sick with a cold.
Unlike
most colds, this one went directly to his chest. No sniffling, no sneezing,
just a hacking cough that sounds as if his head is stuck in an empty oil
barrel. This is the kind of cough that seems to come up from the bowels of the
earth, enters his feet and then shoots up through his lungs. Even the dogs have been growling at him
whenever he coughs, probably because he sounds like something that has rabies.
Trying
to sleep with a man who coughs all night is nearly impossible. But it’s not the
sound of it that bothers me…it’s the bouncing. When my husband coughs, his
entire body rocks, so it feels as if I am trying to sleep in a hammock on the
Titanic. I had to get out of bed three times the other night because I was
nauseated from motion sickness.
“I
think I’m going to sleep in the guest room,” I said on the third night.
“Noooo!”
he protested. “Don’t leave me! What if
I stop breathing or something?”
I
popped a Dramamine.
As
is always the case when my husband is sick, I have to listen to hours of his
whining about how he hasn’t got long for this world and how he should update
his will. I also have to sit through his list of specific instructions about
sprinkling his ashes over a herd of buffalo in Wyoming. I have heard this stuff so often, I tend to
just tune him out and do a lot of nodding, pretending I’m listening.
The
problem with someone who has heart trouble and high blood pressure is that he
is not allowed to take 99 percent of the cough and cold medications on the
market. The pharmacist finally did
suggest a cough medicine he could take, so I was tempted to buy a case of it
and make my husband bathe in it. Instead,
I brought home only one bottle to test it.
Unfortunately,
had I given him a glass of water with red food coloring in it, it would have
had the same effect. The coughing
continued.
Seeing
that my husband pretty much follows the same behavioral pattern whenever he has
a cold or the flu, I thought I was well prepared for what this cold was going
to bring. But to my surprise, something new came with it – something that
caught me completely off guard.
One
of my husband’s favorite TV shows is called “The Big Bang Theory.” On this
show, there is a character named Sheldon. Whenever Sheldon is ill, he asks
Penny, the girl next door, to sing a special song that his mother used to sing
to him whenever he was sick as a child.
It’s called “Soft Kitty” and goes like this: “Soft
kitty, warm kitty, little ball of fur. Happy kitty, sleepy kitty, purr, purr,
purr.”
My
husband always gets a big kick out of hearing that song whenever poor Sheldon
is sick on the show.
The
other night, exhausted from a full day of hacking, my husband went to bed
early. I brought him some water, a dose of his cough medicine and a second
pillow, thinking he might feel better if he propped himself up instead of lying
flat.
“There!”
I said. “Anything else you need?”
“Yes,”
he said, giving me a pleading look. “Sing ‘Soft Kitty’ to me.”
I
laughed, thinking he was kidding.
“No,
I’m serious,” he said. “I really think it would help me.”
“Don’t
be silly,” I said. “A dumb song isn’t going to help your cough!”
“You
never know until you try,” he insisted.
I
took his temperature, thinking he might be delirious from a fever. It was 98.4.
Still,
I wasn’t about to sing “Soft Kitty.”
For one thing, I can’t carry a tune. If I were standing in front of a
firing squad and my last wish was to sing a song, they’d shoot me full of holes
the minute I opened my mouth, just to shut me up.
Last
night, I asked my husband how he was feeling.
“Worse,”
he said, groaning. “Are you sure you won’t sing the ‘Soft Kitty’ song to me?”
“Positive,”
I said.
“Well,
then I guess we’ll just have to sit here and talk some more about my will,
where to spread my ashes, and exactly what I want you to write in my eulogy.”
“Soft
kitty, warm kitty, little ball of fur. Happy kitty, sleepy kitty, purr, purr,
purr.”
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