Cold Sores

Cold sores suck. I get one every year or two, and I am just getting over one now. I hate 'em. They're gross; they're ugly, and they hurt.

One of my sisters gets them, but my other sister and my brother do not. That's (allegedly) because my father never kissed them.

This one came on suddenly after the Oscars, two weekends back. It was a small, painful, little dot on the bottom, right-side of my lip: where I always get them. I had the feeling, the hope, the same hope that I always get, that it was an in-grown hair and not a cold sore.

So I tried to pop it.

I knew right away from the way that the pain felt, as I always do, that it was a cold sore and not an in-grown hair. But, reveling in the pain, I decided to press ahead and try harder to pop - to expunge from my face - that nasty, little sore that, deep-down, I just knew wasn't going to pop no matter how hard I pinched.

And of course it didn't work. The next morning, the sore was a little more well-defined, a little bit bigger, and most clearly a cold sore. I took to the Google to find a home remedy to outshine, or even work in combination with, my other option: the last remnants of an 8-year old tube of Zovirax handed down to me by my father, as surely as the cold sore itself.

The internet had lots of seemingly good ideas for treatment. Only later would I realize and consider that I ended up taking nearly all of my advice from a single message board on a single site about which I knew nothing other than its ranking in the returns for the Google query "cold sore home remedy."

Two recommended solutions, I had on hand. First, I tried hydrogen peroxide [HO]. When applied, the HO seemed like it might be doing something. It bubbled along the rim of the sore, and, more tellingly, it stung. It wasn't bad, though. Pretty much the same feeling as using it to clean out a small abrasion. But two days of repeated treatments only left the sore larger and more raw. Things seemed to be getting worse, not better; it was time to try something new.

The other recommended treatment that I had on hand was bleach. Did I just mention something about, "more raw?" As if I had chemically-tenderized my face for a chemical-cooking to follow?

Whoa!

Ow!

Painful. -- Ridiculously painful.

Painful in a way that made you think about how much pain you could take and still stay standing upright. Surely, this was working!

But, man!, the pain! I'm pretty sure that next Monday we're going to see Jack Bauer make the Russian envoy talk by scuffing the gentleman's lower lip with a cheese grater and then dabbing bleach onto the open wounds. It's called The Clorox Treatment, and the guy will be begging for mercy in moments. I'm predicting he will reveal to Jack what the intended targets are for the drones - Chicago and St. Louis, maybe. In any case, I have no doubt that applying bleach to open wounds on the lips and face of a detainee is an effective way to get them to tell you what it is that you want to know.

But...after two and a half days of repetitive bleach treatments, my cold sore wasn't any better.

When the bleach didn't work, I gave up. I took a night off from any palliatives, and the next night I again avoided any salves and just drank well. The next morning my sore was more relieved than from any other treatment. I quickly and scientifically concluded that the elemental gold present in the Goldschlager liqueur that I had been drinking at a temperature approaching absolute zero must be the propulsion behind my improvement.

Of course! Shiny metals are the arch-enemy of cold sores. Mitch Hedberg taught us that shiny-and-more-noticeable is the first step in cold sore healing. Bling, sore, bling!

But, sadly, three nights of repeated Goldschlager treatments only improved the condition marginally. By this point, it seemed that time was the only thing making a marked difference. So I decided that I might as well polish off the last remnants of that tube of Zovirax from my father. That's what I've used that last two days, and it seems to have done no worse nor no better than any of the other remedies I've been experimenting with.

I just can't quite figure out how to tame these herpes.

Nope, not gonna end it like that.

It seems like time may be the best healer when it comes to cold sores. I'm glad to be done with this round.

Jonathan 3/07/2007 09:47:00 PM