It started out as an ordinary, run-of-the mill winter cold. It’s been a few years since I’ve had a cold, so I thought OK, I’m due.

Generally, my colds are simply an annoyance. Seldom do I take anything for it. Besides, the syrups that are commonly used to treat the symptoms of a cold taste so horrible that you want to scrub your tongue with soap and water.

My cold journeys usually go like this: I develop a slight case of the sniffles. This is followed a day to later by some light to moderate coughing. A week later, it’s all over; the symptoms resolve, and life goes on.

Not so with this cold. It hit me hard and then just kept on hitting.

My head became a giant ball of congestion. At one point, my right ear became totally plugged and developed a good amount of pressure and pain. It was like flying in a plane and that ear simply refused to pop and equalize the pressure.

I had heard somewhere that hydrogen peroxide is good for earaches. I screwed the cap off our bottle of hydrogen peroxide, tilted my head and poured some in.

I heard some angry sizzling, followed by a muffled “boom”, as if a tiny depth charge had exploded in the auditory canal. This was accompanied by the sensation that a thin wire had been shoved down into my right ear after which it made a 90-degree turn and came out my right eyeball. Pouring hydrogen peroxide down into the ear is not something I would recommend.

My wife and I have been married for a long time. We share everything, including this nasty cold.

We were coughing so much that we began to use coughing to communicate. She might point at the TV remote and cough in a manner that said, “Change channels.” I might cough back and shrug my shoulders, which meant, “What do you want to watch?” She would reply with a series of coughs that said, “I don’t care. Anything but this.”

A week or so passed and my symptoms just continued to worsen. We both developed thunderous headaches. I blew my nose so much that I switched from weenie little facial tissues, which I would blow through in a second, to paper towels, the kind that claims to be the “quicker picker upper.” It got so that I would feel slightly panicked if I didn’t have a fresh paper towel in each pocket.

Mornings are the worst. It takes several minutes to clear out the night’s accumulations. Some of the objects that came out of my nostrils were the size of a sneaker. I had to check my closet to make sure all my sneakers were there.

I began to feel as though I’d been hit by a speeding locomotive, which stopped, went into reverse, and hit me again. Then came the biggest blow: I lost my sense of smell and taste.

I scrounged up an old COVID test and took it. The instructions said that it could take up to 15 minutes to get a result. The line that indicated a positive result appeared in two minutes.

I felt really ugly, so I tried to make an appointment with my primary care doctor. He was booked solid, so they sent me to young P.A.

“How are you feeling,” the P. A. asked perkily as she entered the exam room.

“I’m sick and tired of feeling sick and tired,” I replied noting mentally that I have socks that are older than this young lady.

“Let’s take a peek at your chart,” she said cheerily as she opened her laptop.

“Don’t look to close,” I warned.

You could see her perkiness evaporate as she perused the words on the screen.

“How’s your cancer?” she asked in a low tone.

“Good. My last PET scan was perfect. They say that my treatments yielded a 100% response.”

She took my vitals, which were all in the range of normal. She did a nose swab that would detect COVID, the flu and RSV.

“Go home, get lots of rest and drink plenty of fluids,” she advised. She called later to confirm that I tested positive for COVID but negative for RSV and the flu. Oh, joy! I have only one deadly virus!

I’ve been spending a lot of time on my recliner, watching antique tractor videos on YouTube. I feel like a giant slug whose only role on this earth is to secrete vast amounts of phlegm.

But things are looking up. I can go for as long as an hour without coughing. And I don’t worry quite as much about our paper towel supply.

— Jerry’s book, “Dear County Agent Guy” can be found at www.workman.comand in bookstores nationwide.