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brin_bellway[cw: suicide, (strong) illness, unsanitary, (relatively mild) vomit]
[To clarify and allow for better informed consent: the following contains a detailed description of past illnesses. I am not presently experiencing symptoms.]
(link is to the last post before the thread starts branching; follow the "next post in sequence" links for the rest)
Yesterday I learned that many people *don't* get severe, crippling, life-not-worth-living depression for 3 - 5 days almost every time they get a cold. This explains *so much*.
In at least some cases, people not giving a shit about colds aren't doing it out of fundamentally different values: they just *experience less suffering* from colds and therefore care less about avoiding them.
On the bright side, there is apparently significantly less suffering in the world than I thought there was. I would need more data on how the proportions shake out (I expect I'm not the *only* person who experiences this: after all, *somebody* came up with that "clinical depression is the brain getting stuck in convalescence mode" hypothesis), but it's looking like in many cases the ordinary mentally-healthy adult is *not* severely depressed for 1 - 2 cumulative weeks out of every year. (Not to *mention* the children!)
---
I was looking at that Wikipedia article, and honestly there's quite a *bit* of divergence from my own experience. 60% of colds don't have a sore throat?! The first signs of a cold are sneezing and headache?! Since fucking *when*?!
There is very little variation in the way my colds progress. In almost all cases, they go like this:
Day 1: It begins in the throat, with something that feels like thirst but doesn't go away after drinking water. It gradually worsens over the next several hours as I gradually become more suspicious of it, until eventually it is bad enough to be clearly a cold.
(This most commonly begins first thing in the morning, with "bad enough to be clearly a cold" occurring in the afternoon or early evening. The initial time of day has more variation than most aspects of a cold, though: it does sometimes begin in the afternoon or evening, and on at least one occasion I went to bed feeling fine and woke up already well into the sore-throat stage. For description purposes I will assume a morning start time.)
In the evening, the throat forms a layer of mucus. It stretches far enough up into the back of the mouth that if you curl your tongue over and back you can taste it: it tastes terrible. It hurts to swallow. It hurts less if you are swallowing water rather than just spit, and less still if you are swallowing food. Coarse food like crackers will scrape the mucus off your throat, reducing the pain for a little while. In the absence of scrapers, making "k" sounds will help clear it a *little*, but you are likely to have to repeat the sound after every swallow.
It is at about this point that the depression sets in.
Sleep is somewhat more difficult that night, but only somewhat.
Day 2: The morning is much like the previous evening. I usually spend the day lying on the couch reading: both sitting upright and playing video games are too much effort for too little reward, and studying is absolutely out of the question. Reading while sick isn't *that* rewarding, but at least it provides a distraction to help you rid yourself of the unwanted minutes. (Unlike borderlines and Scott Alexander's hypothetical one-day depressions, in *this* case, knowing in the depths of a transient depressive episode that it is going to be transient *is* very helpful. It's still a terrible waste--in a better timeline, where you didn't get sick, these days could have *been* something--but at least it will be over soon. Each minute that passes is a minute closer to a time when you can be truly alive again.)
Somewhere around this point, I often start craving fruit. I assume my body needs the nutrients.
If you are fortunate, the sore throat fades out over the course of the afternoon. If you are unfortunate, it may be as late as the following afternoon.
As the sore throat fades out (however long it takes for that to begin), the stuffy nose fades in. It runs down the back of the throat, unless you are foolish enough to look down, in which case it runs out the nostrils. Every once in a while it runs out the nostrils anyway. Keep a dedicated roll of toilet paper (preferably Costco, which is very soft and does not shed paperdust) and a disposable plastic shopping bag within reach.
There is generally enough stuffiness at any given time to fill one nostril. If you lie on your left side, the left nostril is blocked; on the right side, the right nostril; on your back, both nostrils are moderately stuffy (which is worse). If you *turn* from one side to the other, both nostrils function for a short time (a minute?) while the blockage works its way over. As such, there tends to be a lot of tossing and turning.
Sleep is fitful that night. The constant tossing and turning required for a functioning nose precludes sleep, and sleeping with one nostril is difficult. In many cases there is mild delirium, dreaming non-lucidly (often a nightmare) despite remaining aware of your body lying in bed. Pseudoephedrine will resolve the nose blockage (though it will feel a bit dry) for roughly 4 hours: while better than nothing, this does not constitute a full night's sleep, though if you are lucky you might not wake immediately upon the drug wearing off.
The internal "clock battery" does not function: while normally "closing your eyes for a minute" and "losing consciousness for four hours" feel subjectively different, in this state it is impossible to distinguish between them without external signs.
Day 3 (or 4 if unlucky with the sore-throat length): Much the same as the previous evening, but with more sleep deprivation. I can't feel sexual desire when I'm sick, so the resulting tiredness is "hollow", lacking its sexual component. Dozing off on the couch is still pleasant, though, despite everything. (Flus involve a lot more dozing off on the couch, and younger, more lacking-in-outlets selves referred to this as "the silver lining".)
Day 4 (or 5 if unlucky with the sore-throat length): If you are fortunate, the stuffy nose fades out over the course of the afternoon. If you are unfortunate, it may be as late as the following afternoon.
Even after the stuffy nose fades out, the nose still produces more mucus than usual, and of a consistency that makes it more difficult to remove. Expect to spend as much as half an hour a day (~2 - 3 sessions of ~10 minutes each) painstakingly cleaning it.
As the stuffy nose fades out, the coughing fits fade in. Sometimes it is hard to catch a breath in the midst of one. There is often a feeling of having something stuck in your throat, and during a particularly bad fit you may even feel as if you might vomit (this usually doesn't actually *occur*, but best position your head over a suitable receptacle just in case).
It is at about this point that the depression, mercifully, ends.
Day 5 (potentially as late as 7 if unlucky enough): The beginning of the long tail. The coughing fits and remaining nose issues will gradually fade in frequency and intensity over about a fortnight. At least you're not depressed anymore.
[To clarify and allow for better informed consent: the following contains a detailed description of past illnesses. I am not presently experiencing symptoms.]
(link is to the last post before the thread starts branching; follow the "next post in sequence" links for the rest)
Yesterday I learned that many people *don't* get severe, crippling, life-not-worth-living depression for 3 - 5 days almost every time they get a cold. This explains *so much*.
In at least some cases, people not giving a shit about colds aren't doing it out of fundamentally different values: they just *experience less suffering* from colds and therefore care less about avoiding them.
On the bright side, there is apparently significantly less suffering in the world than I thought there was. I would need more data on how the proportions shake out (I expect I'm not the *only* person who experiences this: after all, *somebody* came up with that "clinical depression is the brain getting stuck in convalescence mode" hypothesis), but it's looking like in many cases the ordinary mentally-healthy adult is *not* severely depressed for 1 - 2 cumulative weeks out of every year. (Not to *mention* the children!)
---
I was looking at that Wikipedia article, and honestly there's quite a *bit* of divergence from my own experience. 60% of colds don't have a sore throat?! The first signs of a cold are sneezing and headache?! Since fucking *when*?!
There is very little variation in the way my colds progress. In almost all cases, they go like this:
Day 1: It begins in the throat, with something that feels like thirst but doesn't go away after drinking water. It gradually worsens over the next several hours as I gradually become more suspicious of it, until eventually it is bad enough to be clearly a cold.
(This most commonly begins first thing in the morning, with "bad enough to be clearly a cold" occurring in the afternoon or early evening. The initial time of day has more variation than most aspects of a cold, though: it does sometimes begin in the afternoon or evening, and on at least one occasion I went to bed feeling fine and woke up already well into the sore-throat stage. For description purposes I will assume a morning start time.)
In the evening, the throat forms a layer of mucus. It stretches far enough up into the back of the mouth that if you curl your tongue over and back you can taste it: it tastes terrible. It hurts to swallow. It hurts less if you are swallowing water rather than just spit, and less still if you are swallowing food. Coarse food like crackers will scrape the mucus off your throat, reducing the pain for a little while. In the absence of scrapers, making "k" sounds will help clear it a *little*, but you are likely to have to repeat the sound after every swallow.
It is at about this point that the depression sets in.
Sleep is somewhat more difficult that night, but only somewhat.
Day 2: The morning is much like the previous evening. I usually spend the day lying on the couch reading: both sitting upright and playing video games are too much effort for too little reward, and studying is absolutely out of the question. Reading while sick isn't *that* rewarding, but at least it provides a distraction to help you rid yourself of the unwanted minutes. (Unlike borderlines and Scott Alexander's hypothetical one-day depressions, in *this* case, knowing in the depths of a transient depressive episode that it is going to be transient *is* very helpful. It's still a terrible waste--in a better timeline, where you didn't get sick, these days could have *been* something--but at least it will be over soon. Each minute that passes is a minute closer to a time when you can be truly alive again.)
Somewhere around this point, I often start craving fruit. I assume my body needs the nutrients.
If you are fortunate, the sore throat fades out over the course of the afternoon. If you are unfortunate, it may be as late as the following afternoon.
As the sore throat fades out (however long it takes for that to begin), the stuffy nose fades in. It runs down the back of the throat, unless you are foolish enough to look down, in which case it runs out the nostrils. Every once in a while it runs out the nostrils anyway. Keep a dedicated roll of toilet paper (preferably Costco, which is very soft and does not shed paperdust) and a disposable plastic shopping bag within reach.
There is generally enough stuffiness at any given time to fill one nostril. If you lie on your left side, the left nostril is blocked; on the right side, the right nostril; on your back, both nostrils are moderately stuffy (which is worse). If you *turn* from one side to the other, both nostrils function for a short time (a minute?) while the blockage works its way over. As such, there tends to be a lot of tossing and turning.
Sleep is fitful that night. The constant tossing and turning required for a functioning nose precludes sleep, and sleeping with one nostril is difficult. In many cases there is mild delirium, dreaming non-lucidly (often a nightmare) despite remaining aware of your body lying in bed. Pseudoephedrine will resolve the nose blockage (though it will feel a bit dry) for roughly 4 hours: while better than nothing, this does not constitute a full night's sleep, though if you are lucky you might not wake immediately upon the drug wearing off.
The internal "clock battery" does not function: while normally "closing your eyes for a minute" and "losing consciousness for four hours" feel subjectively different, in this state it is impossible to distinguish between them without external signs.
Day 3 (or 4 if unlucky with the sore-throat length): Much the same as the previous evening, but with more sleep deprivation. I can't feel sexual desire when I'm sick, so the resulting tiredness is "hollow", lacking its sexual component. Dozing off on the couch is still pleasant, though, despite everything. (Flus involve a lot more dozing off on the couch, and younger, more lacking-in-outlets selves referred to this as "the silver lining".)
Day 4 (or 5 if unlucky with the sore-throat length): If you are fortunate, the stuffy nose fades out over the course of the afternoon. If you are unfortunate, it may be as late as the following afternoon.
Even after the stuffy nose fades out, the nose still produces more mucus than usual, and of a consistency that makes it more difficult to remove. Expect to spend as much as half an hour a day (~2 - 3 sessions of ~10 minutes each) painstakingly cleaning it.
As the stuffy nose fades out, the coughing fits fade in. Sometimes it is hard to catch a breath in the midst of one. There is often a feeling of having something stuck in your throat, and during a particularly bad fit you may even feel as if you might vomit (this usually doesn't actually *occur*, but best position your head over a suitable receptacle just in case).
It is at about this point that the depression, mercifully, ends.
Day 5 (potentially as late as 7 if unlucky enough): The beginning of the long tail. The coughing fits and remaining nose issues will gradually fade in frequency and intensity over about a fortnight. At least you're not depressed anymore.
no subject
Date: 2021-02-03 08:57 pm (UTC)For me a cold involves no extra depression. The most common version involves stuffed-up-feeling sinuses, a nose where only one nostril is clear at a time (and the blocked one cannot be cleared, feels like the blockage is approximately the consistency of cement) but the clear nostril is fully breathable and it doesn't matter what orientation my head is in, no dripping snot, no sore throat, pretty much no other symptoms. Perhaps a slight general malaise along the lines of "maybe I need a little more sleep", but that's all.
Even my worst colds/sore throats don't come with extra depression. In a worst-case scenario, my head will feel like my brain is made of snot, I'll have to blow my nose constantly, my throat will be sore from post-nasal drip, and I'll have intermittent coughing fits where I feel slightly nauseated, but it all happens at once, not one symptom at a time. I have no idea how long it usually lasts as I have no time sense, but I know if it settles down in my chest and turns into bronchitis that can last a couple weeks. That's with my symptoms being just the cough and maybe a somewhat sore throat, though. I can lose my voice with bronchitis but only for a couple days.
That makes... a lot more sense of why you mind colds so much. I'd figured it was just part of the thing where you actively avoid any discomfort while I'm sort of not programmed to notice if it's avoidable.
no subject
Date: 2021-02-04 03:32 pm (UTC)It really does, yeah. You're the second person to explicitly say that to me, and I bet a lot of people are thinking it.
(It kind of reminds me of the time I had a very unusually small number of evening customers at work and was actually able to finish my entire cleaning checklist not only on time for once but *ahead* of schedule, and then I found out that on every other night of the week but mine, having that few customers in the evening was *normal*. No wonder all the other evening shift-leaders looked down on me for not being able to finish on time! *I* would look down on me if I thought *that* was the workload I was failing to handle!)
Now I just need to figure out how to explain it to people who *aren't* part of communities where it's widely understood just how awful depression is. Maybe leave it vague: "No, I can't [go to a party where one of the guests is known to be sick]/[work while sick, even from home]/[etc], I get very severe colds and I [would be]/[am about to be] laid out for the next few days. [I can work from home *next* week when it's just down to coughing fits.]"
Just knowing that I can't assume a shared base of "this is how colds feel" is probably most of the battle.