I don’t know how I did it, but I missed the cold and flu season this winter. This is the first year I can remember not getting some sort of sniffles.

We could credit my flu shot, except I didn’t get one. Vitamin C might have helped, but I don’t take any. The only lifestyle change I’ve made is staying out of the creek during hunting season.
It’s a good thing I didn’t do anything differently. If I had started eating alfalfa or gulping mood enhancers, I would have sworn that’s what kept me from getting a cold.

That’s what happened when I got an infected tear duct a few years ago. That eye infection was the worst pain I’ve seen since the kidney stones back in the ‘80s. (You don’t want to hear about the kidney stones?)

The pain from the eye infection got so bad I finally went to the doctor. Doc took one look at my eye and called in his assistant. “I want you to see this,” he said. “This is a classic case of an infected tear duct.”

“Oh, that is interesting,” she said.

That’s me, I thought. I’m a classic case of everything.
When I’m dead, someone at the medical school will announce to the class, “Look at this cadaver over here. He’s got the worst case of everything I’ve ever seen.”

My doctor got me fixed up, though. He gave me a prescription for some painkillers and antibiotics, and I headed for the drugstore. The pharmacist had the painkillers in stock but had to order the antibiotics.

“That’s okay,” I said. “These should keep the pain down. I’ll get the antibiotics in the morning.”

By 10 o’clock I knew I had underestimated the eye infection and overestimated the painkillers. The pain was so bad that about midnight, I began rummaging through the medicine cabinet. An old bottle of antibiotics caught my eye.

The expiration date was 1998, but I took a couple, anyway, and went to bed. When I awoke at 6 a.m., the pain was gone!
I couldn’t believe it. Those must have been the best antibiotics ever invented, I thought. Then, I finally realized the antibiotics couldn’t have worked that quickly. The tear duct infection just went away.

I had the same problem a couple of years later and went to the hospital again. This time I saw an intern, and after convincing her I had a tear duct infection, she wrote me a prescription for the same antibiotics I was supposed to get the time before.

Wait a minute, I thought to myself. I’m just going to wait and see what happens overnight.

Sure enough, about nine o’clock, I sneezed. And I was cured again.
I learned two things from these experiences: there aren’t any silver bullets in the medicine cabinet, and we should stay out of the creek as much as we can.

Readers with questions or comments for Roger Pond may write to him in care of this publication.