Symptoms

With less than a dozen calendar days left at our workplace, something has started running through the office. At first I thought my hayfever had kicked in a few weeks later than usual. I started getting a tickle in my throat on Monday, a few hours after my failed attempt to mow the lawn. Maybe I had stirred something up? I felt worse Monday night, with lots more coughing. At work on Tuesday I was reminded that several people had been coughing and sniffling the week before. By Wednesday the place had started to sound like a sick ward, and I had started sneezing. Was this an allergy, or a cold?

I'm starting to think it may be a cold because of another symptom I was showing several days before the ticklish cough: I lost the ability to spell.

Not entirely, and not all the time. But in retrospect I realize that for about a week I haven't been able to type more than a few words without having to go back and correct some typo. More often than not these are phonetic typos - words written out to more literally resemble the way they sound than they are normally spelled.

Does anyone else get this? I have no idea what brings this on. I just know that when it happens, it usually means I am going to be sick within a week. I seem to be past this stage, and now am just sick. We'll see how long that lasts.