Big problems I can take, but a cold slays me

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Updated: March 6, 2012 8:08AM

So far, the big medical problems haven’t fazed me.

Four cancer operations in the past two years, so what.

Lengthy bouts of chemotherapy with all sorts of amusing side effects — a 24/7 nosebleed, fingers so sensitive to cold I had to wear gloves to get something out of the refrigerator, so wobbly that one day when I didn’t want to use my cane I fell face forward into a parking lot and smashed up my glasses.

Bring it on.

Then there is the fact that I’ve had a dicky ticker, as the Brits would say, since birth and that has resulted in all sorts of interesting things over the years, the most recent being spending this past New Year in Edward Hospital’s Heart Hospital having excess fluid removed from my body.

Not all that much fun but the medical care is great and the food was very good.

If there is anything positive I could say about my health over the years is that I very rarely, verging on never, catch a bad cold.

Until this past week.

Here’s an investment tip for you.

Judging from the amount of Kleenex I’ve used in the past few days, call your broker and buy the stock of Kimberly-Clark Worldwide, Inc.

Until I looked at the bottom of the Kleenex box that has assumed permanent residence next to the keyboard of my computer at work, I never realized that Kimberly-Clark was hyphenated.

I also never knew that Worldwide was part of the company’s name either, but then the product description on the bottom of the box is both in English and French.

Working on Thursday and Friday, I was trying to concentrate on what I was doing, but at times my eyes were running so badly I could barely see the computer screen.

Frankly, I had come to think that maybe with all my other maladies, that God was giving me a pass on the common cold.

But unfortunately that was not the case.

When I told my sister, a nurse, that I had hopes that the cold would only last for a day or two, she told me that it would most likely take about five days to clear.

Which, since it didn’t begin to hit me until Wednesday I will still have it by the time this is published on Sunday.

I can only hope that it will have let up enough by then so I can enjoy the Super Bowl as opposed to, say, sleeping through it in my chair in the family room with the cat at my side also gently snoozing.

Job likes it when we take naps in the chair, though he has not as big a football fan as I am.

Actually, I’m looking forward to the game, though of the teams that made the playoffs I was hoping that the Saints would make it to the final.

Oh, well.

Giants 27, Patriots 20.