Going Viral
I awake with the dawn and lie, eyes closed, listening to the sounds of the morning: the slight rustle of the curtain responding to a breeze passing through the open window; the morning birdsong encouraging me to start my day; the distant lowing of cows in the fields. I am reluctant to move this morning though. I sense my neighbour leave for work, her key turning in the lock; hear children leaving to catch the school bus, their chatter eager and bright; and downstairs, my cat is demanding my attention. Still, I do not move. I need to figure out this feeling. Everything is as it should be – as it always is – yet something isn’t right.
You are late to the party my dear. I have been here for days: plotting and scheming, laying down my pathways, slowly disabling your defences. Shall I give you a clue? I hate to see you lying there trying to fathom the change – so subtle are my preparations.
Reluctantly I rise, perform my morning ablutions and dress. There is an otherworldliness to my mind this morning, like I am drifting from task to task without really being present. I unload the dishwasher, feed the cat, sweep the floor - and then, I feel it: a feeling so slight that it is almost not there, a scratch in my throat.
Aha! There we are. Now we are on the same page. You humans do lack intuition, even about your own state of being. In case you were wondering, several days ago I drifted past your body’s pitiful defences and began my sabotage. I hijacked your throat and nasal cells causing them to release two inflammatory proteins: prostaglandins resulting in the tickle that you have just noticed, and bradykinin which has excited your sensory nerves, mimicking the feeling of raw, scratchy pain – that’s right mimicking, it’s all an illusion. What’s more, they work in a continuous feedback loop - the ultimate tag team!
You know, you could take some aspirin; it will stop the tickly soreness but I’m afraid my mission is well on course now. The path forward is inevitable.
Luckily, it’s a no-work day, so I decide to take it easy and fight this thing off. I spray my throat with antiseptic, take some painkillers and make myself the first of many hot honey and lemon drinks. I spend the morning pottering in the garden; it’s a lovely early autumn day and I enjoy cutting some fresh herbs, hanging them to dry in the greenhouse, and replacing the fading blooms in the hanging baskets with winter pansies and trailing ivy. After lunch I settle down with my favourite book – one I have read many times – and enjoy immersing myself in a completely different world. Hours pass, yet I am not hungry. I decide to have an early night, pleased that I seem to have shaken whatever was starting this morning.
Hilarious! You really think you can just ‘shake me off’? This is not a democracy; it is a cruel dictatorship. Signal release of the cytokines - tomorrow is another day on the battlefield.
I can’t move. I actually can’t move. I feel as though my muscles have been turned to stone and my joints have been frozen. It takes me several minutes just to get myself into a sitting position and minutes more to get to the bathroom. I wouldn’t have bothered had it not been a necessity, and my teeth remain unclean, even though I know I would feel better if I brushed them. So much for ‘beating the bug’! Why are my eyes burning?
I manage to get downstairs and make myself a full flask of hot honey and lemon, carrying it back upstairs with a box of paracetamol. Grateful to be back in the darkness of my bedroom, I dose myself up and return to the grateful release of sleep.
A couple of hours later I awake and feel much better; still achy but better. I get up and feed the cat; heat up a tin of chicken soup – good for colds, yes? – and flick on the TV, closing my eyes to the cheesy soundtrack of Homes under the Hammer. An hour later I awake with a banging headache, not helped by the fact that my tickly throat has progressed into a tickly cough, which beats on my skull like hammers to a church bell.
I retreat. Back to sleep. There are currently two protagonists in my life; the villain virus and sleep, which has now become my hero.
Great, you have succumbed to classic progression. Good to see that I have not lost my touch. Those cytokines are magical little messengers and are worth exploring further. They have sent signals to every muscle in your body, all of which are now fully inflamed and breaking down, in order to join the battle to fight off my army – quite annoying really. You see, these cytokines detected my presence way before you did, and although they themselves cannot cross the blood-brain barrier directly, they can send signals to the blood vessels in your brain, so that essential proteins are released. They also ensure that you behave in a way that gives you the best chance of recovery, which suits me fine.
Clever hey! You lose your appetite – less energy needed for digestion; you feel tired and slow down – less energy spent on movement; you cough and sneeze more – unpleasant I know, but the virus is expelled. Less energy spent on these things means more energy for your immune system. How can you not know this about your own body? At least you seem to have listened and responded appropriately.
As for those aching muscles, they are being systematically dismantled at a microscopic level, your amino acids are being harvested to feed your immune response, no wonder they feel sore. Don’t worry though, as soon as the enemy is dispelled, normal practice will resume.
In short, cytokines are orchestrating this battle. They are entirely responsible for the misery you are experiencing. Their effectiveness will ultimately determine your response to me – and that is not a foregone conclusion. Where this goes from now, is ultimately down to you. I await your response.
3am. How can I possibly need the loo? I have only drunk half a flask of liquid in the past six hours. Walking to the bathroom is agony; the soles of my feet hurt for Christ’s sake!
5am. Ditto. This virus is literally taking the piss!
7am. Yep, again! I must be dehydrating fast.
I get up. There is no point trying to sleep any more. My head is still pounding and my nasal cavities have completely blocked up – I can’t even breathe without hurting. I head downstairs and rummage through the medicine box, finding a dusty old nasal spray underneath some ancient bandages. I use it eagerly, desperately, without even checking the use-by date, and bask in the instant, magical relief it brings. Of course, I fumble and drop it on the floor, stooping to retrieve it which in turn intensifies the pounding in my head. I swallow a couple of Paracetamol and a couple of Ibuprofen in quick succession, past caring about side effects.
DECONGESTANTS are DANGEROUS!!!!!!!
Right. Listen. Don’t use it again. I know that you think that I am the enemy and am trying to kill you but that is not true. I am simply trying to replicate. Unfortunately, I can’t simply hook up and have a nice cuddle like you humans can, so I have to do it my way. An unfortunate side effect, from your point of view, is that you have to feel miserable for a few days; but isn’t that a small price to pay for the survival of my species?
Let me tell you a couple of impressive facts about me – it may make you respect me a bit more. I make you sneeze at 200mph so that tens of thousands of droplets are dispersed to maximise infection rates whilst the contents of your runny nose are inevitably transferred to fingers, door handles, and keyboards, all waiting to be picked up by the next person who touches their eyes or nose. Once I’ve landed, I use your own cell's machinery to build millions of copies of myself within hours, and I don’t let you know I’m there until its too late for you to do anything about it.
But…and this is important… I don’t want to kill you; to kill you would be to kill myself. I really need you to be well enough to get out and about; you are my transport system and I need you to distribute me to new hosts. Which brings us nicely back to the decongestant.
I’m going to make this really simple. You are suffering from Vascular Engorgement – otherwise known as a blocked nose. The reason that this virus is limited to your nose and throat is because I have a good plan, limiting my focus to your upper respiratory system; you get infected, suffer a bit, get better, I’m gone.
If you start meddling with the process, things could get a whole lot worse. With your nose unblocked, the virus can work its way down into the tissues of your lower respiratory tract, or even further, infecting your trachea, bronchi, and lungs and causing dangerous swelling. Not what either of us want.
In effect, those proteins that we talked about earlier will start to attack your own body’s tissue deeper down. This means that the leaking gets worse. In the nose, leaky blood vessels cause a stuffy nose. In the lungs, leaky blood vessels mean that fluid floods directly into the air sacs, and I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that that would be bad news. It could be game over both of us. Remember Covid?
BIN the DECONGESTENT. Just deal with the cold for a few more days.
I wake mid-morning after fourteen hours sleep. My nose is still stuffy but a small channel has opened in my left nostril allowing me to breathe. My head is still aching but my limbs have been released from their cement casing and I can flex my ankles without wanting to cry.
I spend the day emptying my nose into a full box of tissues, one by one, and sneezing prolifically. It’s exhausting but liberating; I feel as though I am actually expelling this virus from my body, which can only be good. I am starving! I work my way through lunch, snacks, dinner, more snacks and four hourly paracetamol, all washed down with gallons of hot honey and lemon. My head still hurts. At 10pm, after doing less than 500 steps all day, I am exhausted and return to my sick bed, now renamed my recovery bed.
This is good! Very good! There has been a shift in your immune system from underdog to champion fighter. This is good news for both of us, you are on the mend and you have sneezed out all my babies – thank you. I can die happy.
Before I go though, I will just tell you about the clean-up operation – obviously your body will have to sort out the mess I’ve left behind. That dry tickly cough that started a few days ago was just nervous system irritation – I know, annoying. Over the next week or so, as excess mucus drips down the back of your throat, you will probably develop a real cough. Again, this is annoying but will help to get rid of any infection that got past first base and into your lower respiratory system. Your nose will also stop dripping; the clear mucus being replaced by thick, yellow, or green mucus – looks disgusting but it’s full of disease-fighting white blood cells which are, unfortunately, green. After this you will just continue to get better and forget that I ever existed – until next time of course. You have been a great host, so you never know – I may recommend you.
It is a week since I started my gradual recovery, a week of snot – how much mucus can one body produce? And this annoying hacking cough feels like it will be with me for a while yet. At least the headache has gone and I am not permanently bunged up. And my muscles are back to normal.
I actually feel quite proud that I shifted it so easily; it must have been all of the hot honey and lemon drinks and paracetamol – oh, and that old decongestant; thank goodness that was in the medicine box or I might not have survived the blocked nose.
At least I have boosted my immune system. I shouldn’t have another cold for ages.
Idiot!
Do you humans know nothing?
Obviously if the same type of virus came by it could be dealt with, but there are thousands if not millions of different viruses and being immune to one does not make you immune to the others.
And, as if to prove a point, here I am, another unique virus sat right on the handle of your coffee cup. See you in a few days – look out for that tell-tale tickle.
