Just A Gal From Glidden: Fighting over lozenges, counting our blessings

By Kate Winquist

This week’s column comes to you under the influence of NyQuil and Halls.

Yes, I caught my annual spring cold. I am blaming Robert as he came down with symptoms a couple of days before me. I just wish now that I had slept in the spare bedroom when he first started complaining of a sore throat. At first, I thought it was just the “man cold” — never as bad as they’d like you to think. As it turns out, he actually wasn’t just looking for sympathy.

Kate (left) and her sister Carrie take a turn being “under the weather” in this childhood photo — a reminder of the days when Mom made everything better.

But why do guys have to be so noisy when they cough, sneeze or blow their nose? Even our dog gets startled.

Still, things could be much worse, and we’re counting our blessings this week.

Joan’s husband was hospitalized with cardiac heart failure. Thankfully, he is doing much better and is now home.

It hasn’t been an easy week at the office.

My dear friend, mentor and columnist, Madonna Hamel, is recovering from brain surgery — yes, you read that correctly. She had a tennis ball-sized tumour removed at University Hospital and is now in the care of her sister and husband in Medicine Hat.

Madonna is chomping at the bit to get back to writing, but we’ll see. I can’t help but admire her outlook. When I asked her how she was doing, her immediate reply was, “Actually, it’s been amazing and fascinating.”

Amazing.

Fascinating.

When I wished her the best heading into this next chapter, she told me it has already been enriching. That’s when I lost it.

I texted Madonna to tell her she was making me cry. She replied, “That is good. It’s all so beautiful — this life, body and spirit of ours.”

And I’m sitting there thinking: this woman has just had brain surgery and she is still more poetic than I could ever hope to be.

Perspective shows up when you least expect it.

Remember when you were a kid and Mom made everything better when you were sick? Or at least she tried.

On the farm, all of our bedrooms were downstairs except for Mom and Dad’s. When I was sick, I got to sleep upstairs on the hide-a-bed in the living room. There was a cool mist vaporizer humming beside me, a puke bucket just in case, a box of Kleenex within reach, and Vicks VapoRub slathered on my chest. Plenty of liquids, too.

It’s nice to have someone waiting on you when you’re under the weather.

No chance of that happening this week, with Robert being sick as well.

He says he remembers his mom making a mustard plaster for his chest, which “worked pretty well, but burned like a son of a bitch.”

By the time you read this, Robert and I should be fully mended. In the meantime, we’ll fight over the last package of lozenges and remind ourselves that things can always be worse.

And maybe, if we’re lucky, we’ll carry just a little bit of Madonna’s perspective with us.