Common Cold - Nothing innocuous about it!

Its been nearly four hours since the work day has started and the only sound bytes from the team has been a well-orchestrated symphony of coughs and sneezes, with ‘yours truly’ being an active participant !
Common cold - dont let the seemingly harmless term fool you. After a memorable weekend, as though to aggravate the monday blues that had already creeped in by the evening, it all started with a hardly-audible dry cough and lo, behold ! A matter of few hours, the entire larynx region is under attack and the voice box has been taken hostage ! And the morning left me wondering if I will be deemed a bio-terrorist at the work place . But I wasn’t the sole bio-terrorist at the work place
Even during this miserable time, I found a reason to smile ! I remembered a poem about Common Cold (and titled the same) by Ogden Nash that I had read long time back and took solace in the fact, along with other bodily juices, the creative juice also oozed for some one during this wretched state ! ;-)

Common Cold

Go hang yourself, you old M.D,!
You shall not sneer at me.
Pick up your hat and stethoscope,
Go wash your mouth with laundry soap;
I contemplate a joy exquisite
In not paying you for your visit.
I did not call you to be told
My malady is a common cold.

By pounding brow and swollen lip;
By fever's hot and scaly grip;
By those two red redundant eyes
That weep like woeful April skies;
By racking snuffle, snort, and sniff;
By handkerchief after handkerchief;
This cold you wave away as naught
Is the damnedest cold man ever caught!

Give ear, you scientific fossil!
Here is the genuine Cold Colossal;
The Cold of which researchers dream,
The Perfect Cold, the Cold Supreme.
This honored system humbly holds
The Super-cold to end all colds;
The Cold Crusading for Democracy;
The Führer of the Streptococcracy.

Bacilli swarm within my portals
Such as were ne'er conceived by mortals,
But bred by scientists wise and hoary
In some Olympic laboratory;
Bacteria as large as mice,
With feet of fire and heads of ice
Who never interrupt for slumber
Their stamping elephantine rumba.

A common cold, gadzooks, forsooth!
Ah, yes. And Lincoln was jostled by Booth;
Don Juan was a budding gallant,
And Shakespeare's plays show signs of talent;
The Arctic winter is fairly coolish,
And your diagnosis is fairly foolish.
Oh what a derision history holds
For the man who belittled the Cold of Colds!
-- Ogden Nash