Coldsore Party – or – Let’s Be Honest, They’re Mouth Herpes

Coldsore Party – or – Let’s Be Honest, They’re Mouth Herpes

August 23, 2011, 9:29 AM
Filed under: Miscellanea

I am diseased.  I am unclean.  Herpes Simplex loiters in my body, waiting until my defences are down and then throwing a disgusting little festival.  Actually, can I take all that back?  ‘I get coldsores occasionally’ sounds much less…well, fetid.

I would like you to think of all the images I could have used to illustrate this post, and then I would like you to thank me.

It happens when I’m a bit run down, and baby, I’m pretty damn run down at the moment.  I have Ekka disease (despite not having actually gone to the Ekka), a head full of mucus and a freshly sandpapered throat.  All of these things I can live with.  People get colds.  It happens.  It’s the charming little blossom on the edge of my lip that makes me despair the most.  I’d like to stand proud, claiming it ain’t nothin’ but a thang, and certainly doesn’t have any moral value.  I haven’t managed that just yet.  It’s…well, it’s just yucky.

It’s not like I haven’t had a while to get used to it.  I was…marked…at a very young age.  As a toddler, I did the usual things like eating dirt and kissing dogs.  Nothing.  Healthy as a horse.  One fateful day changed all that.  As I’ve mentioned, my extended family went through a Dalmatian phase.  Perhaps ‘phase’ isn’t quite the right word, given that it lasted 20 years.  It peaked in my immediate family just before I was born, when my Esteemed Mother decided that the Curries were moving to the countryside to breed Dalmatians.  We were back in the city before I turned one, but the Dalmatian enthusiasm had only been encouraged.  I spent many a weekend toddling around dog shows, an excellent location for both dirt-eating and dog-kissing.

Neither of those things did me in, though.  I have never been the shy, retiring type, and was not un-adorable as a toddler (my looks peaked early).  I believe I had ringlets at one stage.  It is for this reason that I was often dragged around said dog shows by random packs of older girls.  On one fateful day, my mother spotted me partway across the oval, probably being made to pretend to be a Cabbage Patch Kid or something.  In slow motion, she heard an eight-year-old declare her intention to give the baby a kiss.  The kisser had a nasty case of coldsores.  My mother leapt into action.  Dalmatians scattered.  Dog-lovers reeled.  I can only assume that Chariots of Fire played in the background as she screamed ‘NOOOOOOO.’  It was to no avail.  My naive young immune system had been breached.

I blame this unknown Barbie-carrying plague bearer for a lifetime of anguish, but I refuse to pass on her curse.  I am eternally diligent.  I used to be a Zovirax enthusiast, but have recently discovered the little patches you pop over the whole nasty affair.  Sadly, the manufacturers and I differ in our opinions as to what constitutes ‘invisible’.  I’d rather not appear in public with part of my face covered in vaguely smoky clear plastic like a boring school notebook, but hey.  They’re okay for home.  I am proud to state that I have managed to defend my beloved from his own fatalistic attitude to coldsores for nearly three years now.  He will not be infected.  It is not inevitable.  Not on my watch.

(My mother suffered a great deal of anguish upon learning that her first-born child was now infected, but she really needn’t have.  After all, if I hadn’t gotten it then, I certainly would have at 19, when I drunkenly inscribed my love for a boy in a band in lipstick on a toilet door at Ric’s.  Then I forgot, and used the lipstick.)

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