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Brooks Peterson

Monday, April 2, 2001
Anonymous bug made its presence felt

Some years ago, Corpus Christi and environs got blind-sided, but good, by a little weather system churning around out in the Gulf of Mexico.
   The pore thing feinted this way, then that, which gave it a certain entertainment value, but none of our weather gurus assigned much significance to it.
   Turns out it was just toying with us. When it finally sloshed on shore, it gave us a thorough going-over.
   Nothing catastrophic, you understand, but certainly more than your average little South Texas storm: torrential rains, howling winds and more than enough sturm und drang to pop the locals' eyelids to the full open position.
   It wasn't a bona fide hurricane; neither was it a tropical storm. But it was a Weather Event substantial enough to deserve a special designator. Characteristically, it was Caller-Times columnist Bill Walraven who came up with a tag for it:
   He dubbed it "Hurricane Low Pressure Area."
   Perfect.
   This week, I find myself confronted by a similar challenge - though it is biological, or perhaps epidemiological, rather than meteorological. And with Walraven otherwise engaged these days, I guess I'm the one who'll have to deal with it.
   I became aware several days ago that I had attracted the attention of some bug or micro-organism (or perhaps bad juju or defective mojo, who knows?).
   This did not come as a total surprise. I have observed over the years that the interval during which winter (or what passes for it, down in these balmy latitudes) grudgingly gives way to spring lends itself to maladies that flourish neither in the chill of winter nor the suffocating heat of summer.
   Now, I knew it wasn't the flu. Hadn't I gotten the corporate flu shot? Of course I had. (The benefits just don't quit!) I was not feverish; neither did I suffer from any other showy symptoms.
   What it boiled down to was that I felt as if the entire Third Armored Division had driven over me - right down to the last M-1 main battle tank. You wanta talk lassitude?
   This desire to burrow under the covers was further reinforced by the fact that getting horizontal was the only way I could get any surcease from the dry, hacking cough I had picked up as the festivities got under way.
   Now, I am no connoisseur of coughs, but this one was a beaut, no question. I willed myself not to give in to it ("I will not cough. I will not cough. I will not - HACK HACK HOOP HAROOP HOOP HACK HACK . . ."). No go.
   It put me in mind of a "Dilbert" comic strip a few weeks back in which a harried worker convinces her supervisor that she really is sick by coughing her lungs out. Literally.
   After a weekend's worth of that, we moved on to Stage 2, which offered relief . . . of a sort. I progressed from the dry hacking cough to what someone (I don't remember who - I wasn't taking notes) described decorously but accurately as a "productive" cough.
   This was progress. It came, however, at a cost. In this phase, a rumbling cough was accompanied by the distinct sense that unpleasant little creatures were scampering around inside my person, scouring the insides of my lungs with Brillo pads.
   For sheer theatricality, this stage put the earlier one to shame - particularly since, when I returned to work, it turned out a couple of my colleagues had contracted the same bug: Walk by our offices at the right time, and you would have sworn you were in a TB ward.
   As I write this, I'm well on the road to recovery. However, the central issue remains: What do we call this stuff? Like "Hurricane Low Pressure," this nasty little syndrome deserves a name.
   And this hack journalist (so to speak) is on the case. Try these on for size:
   For the genteel sufferer, the "Corpus Christi Catarrh" should do the trick.
   Less refined, but ultimately closer to the reality, is Option B: the "Corpitos Crud."
   Pass the cough drops.
   (Brooks Peterson can be reached by phone at 886-3772 or by e-mail at petersonb@caller.com)

Brooks Peterson can be reached by phone at 886-3772, or by e-mail at petersonb@caller.com

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