I'm coughing again. A lot.
I no longer have eosinophils in my blood, but the coughing has become progressively worse over the last week. I don't know why.
I do know that I am, once again, a social pariah. With the heightened anxiety over swine flu, the public reaction is far worse than last year.
Yesterday, I had two different cashiers ask me, "Are you sick?" in an accusatory fashion. "Yes, I guess I am, but I'm not contagious," I answered. Or maybe I should have just said, "No, but I just have this annoying cough." Or maybe I should have asked, "What happened to 'Have a nice day.'"
This evening, I couldn't stop coughing during the WriteGirl PlayWriteGirl Event at the Pasadena Playhouse. Teen girls wrote monologues and short skits during a day-long workshop, and professional actors from film and television brought their words to life. Before the show started, I offered a preemptive apology and explanation to the woman sitting next to me.
Once the show started, I tried to stifle my coughs and let them erupt during clapping. And I was fastidious about covering my mouth with both hands.
I noticed that each time I coughed, the elderly lady sitting in front of me moved her program to her left ear. The first time, I thought it was a coincidence. Then she did it again and again. Soon, she wasn't moving the program from her ear. This passive-aggressive act made me so intensely uncomfortable that I apologized to my friend and left before the program was over. (Of course, that meant climbing over a dozen legs and then hopping over a chair to make my escape.)
I'm thinking of getting a few buttons printed:
- I do not have swine flu.
- Ask me about my EOS.
- Cough 'til you drop
- No thank you, I do not want a cough drop.
- I'm sorry.
-
No comments:
Post a Comment