I’m back in the saddle after a week of vacation and dealing with the “whatever is going around town.”

I was looking forward to my vacation, especially since it came during the Thanksgiving holidays and my birthday — a rare occurrence. I just didn’t plan on getting sick during my needed rest, and getting sick while you’re on vacation is the pits. I should know better.

Several years ago, I went to visit my mother in Norcross, Georgia, arrived at the height of the pollen season, and got sick.

My vacation malady began Sunday as a sore throat and stuffy nose. It seemed to go away by Monday, but Tuesday, the day before my vacation began, it hit full force about 2 in the morning, and every hour on the hour, I popped up in the bed either coughing or unable to breathe.

When my alarm went off I dragged myself out of bed fully awake after a total of four hours sleep and pushed myself through my morning routine to get ready for work while hacking, barking and sniffing. Before leaving, I grabbed a box of tissue and headed out the door.

I called the doctor, got meds guaranteed to cure me, headed for gumbo to clear my head and then went back to work, where I struggled to finish the day, announcing as I left that I was “going home to be sick.”

A vacation is supposed to be a break from work; a time when you get out of the house and get away from the worries of the office and take the time to go someplace else, do something different and relax. When you’re on vacation and sick, all that stuff goes out the window. I had planned to watch some of my favorite movies, go to the Military Park and enjoy visiting the Cairo and its museum, which is my favorite place in the park. No such luck.

My first day of vacation was spent in my recliner lapsing in and out of sleep as I struggled to make up for the loss of sleep from the two nights before. Thanksgiving Day, I felt well enough to go out and eat, and we picked a time when the restaurant where we ate would be almost, if not completely, empty so I wouldn’t scare the diners. That night I watched the Egg Bowl with a stuffy head and a nose running like a faucet.

Any thoughts I had about sleeping late in the morning went out the window by coughing spells in the early mornings.

So I’m, back at my machine, suffering from the lingering effects of crud that struck me and the rest of my family over the past two weeks and trying to work. And when it’s time in January to start thinking about vacation, I’ll set my dates and in the weeks before I’ll wear a surgical mask and carry disinfectant. I ain’t getting sick on vacation again.

John Surratt is a staff writer at The Vicksburg Post. You may reach him at john.surratt@vicksburgpost.com.