Last Sunday, I came down with my first cold of 2017. I wasn't really too surprised about it due to the wacky February weather and seeing lots of my friends and classmates get sick, but getting a cold isn't fun no matter how prepared you might be. I'm a relatively healthy person, so I tend not to stress over if and when I get sick, but being a musician and doing projects for school that require me to speak or move around, I always want to get over a sickness as quickly as possible. Sadly, there is no readily available cure for the common cold, so when I come down with one, I have to get a little more creative with how I can get over it. Up until recently though, I never really had the best of luck. A majority of the colds I've had in the 21 and a half years I've been alive lasted for weeks or even months. When I was 16, I actually had a cold that lingered around from late January all the way to April.

This past week, however, it seems that my luck with getting over colds has changed for the better. Thanks to some dedicated strategies, I was able to get past the worst of my cold in just four days. With February being a time where many people get colds, I'd thought I'd share with everyone what I did that helped me get over my cold.

Before I went to bed on Sunday, I chugged a decent amount of water, ate a clementine, and took an Airborne in addition to my multivitamin. When I woke up for class on Monday, my head felt heavy and my throat was extremely scratchy. After my morning class, I took a hot shower, drank some green tea, chugged more water, and took another Airborne. My afternoon and evening classes were difficult to get through, but I made it. Before bed on Monday night, I drank more green tea, chugged more water, and took another Airborne with my multivitamin.

I only have one class on Tuesday, and it's in the evening so I had plenty of time to rest. That was a good thing, because Tuesday was when the cold reached its peak level of discomfort in my body. My head hurt, my nose was stuffed up, my lips were dry as a desert, and I couldn't stop sneezing and coughing. After sleeping a lot, taking an Airborne, and somehow managing to get through my two and a half hour evening class, I began the eleven minute walk back to my apartment. It was horrible; I was gasping for air, my nostrils were on fire, I was sweating, and the cold Philadelphia wind just made things worse. In addition to the water, tea, multivitamin and Airborne I took before bed, I also gargled some anti bacterial mouthwash to relax and clear my throat as well as fight some bacteria.

I woke up for class on Wednesday morning pleasantly surprised about how I felt. My nose was still stuffy, but my headache and throat issues had subsided. I was able to go about my day without too many issues, as I continued the pattern of hot showers, green tea, water, multivitamins, Airborne, and gargling. When I got back to my apartment on Wednesday night, I made sure to get plenty of sleep. By mid afternoon on Thursday, my once uncomfortable cold was reduced to just some sniffles.

I'm not sure if I'll have similar success with fighting off colds in the future, but it was definitely nice to get over this one quickly! Now that I've written down everything I did, there's no chance I'll forget about how I fought off this cold. Since it's February, and the common cold is taking over universities across the country, not revealing secrets about getting over colds to others is just plain wrong. Fortunately, better weather is on the horizon soon!

Disclaimer: You may have noticed I did not take any actual medicine during this period. Well, I sort of did, but not cold medicine. Let's just say what I had was green, leafy, and controversial. I'm not condoning it, but I do think I should say it helped.