Feb 17 2019
Groundhog
It’s a week later, and I’m still sick. It’s still raining, and the power has been out repeatedly, both at home and at work. I feel like I’m in an endless loop, like Bill Murray in “Groundhog Day”. Every day I go to work and get through the day in a daze, then go home and go to bed. My voice is an unfamiliar croak. Sometimes I eat dinner and sometimes I don’t. Food is still spectacularly unappealing to me.
Earlier this week, I was taking minutes in the doctors’ meeting, and my cough was there, too. After the meeting, one of the docs took me aside and said, “Come and see me and I’ll fix you up.” I made an appointment for the afternoon, but half an hour after the meeting ended, one of the medical assistants came to tell me that the doc had a no show and sent her to find me. Clearly she was on a mission!
The doc listened to my lungs, with their familiar ripping lace sound, and said I have bronchitis. She then gave me a breathing treatment, which I have never had before. It’s kind of like a little hand-held vaporizer that you breathe in. It also looked a bit like something out of a mad scientist’s laboratory in an old horror movie, with its pale, visible vapor bubbling out and wreathing away mysteriously.
After that, she prescribed me a 5 pack of antibiotics, an inhaler, and some codeine cough syrup to wrestle the Cough from Hell into submission at night so our heroine could get some much-needed sleep. We are beyond beauty sleep at this point, my friends.
The inhaler was also a new experience for me, and I’m still not convinced I’m using it correctly, but hopefully it’s helping. I’m supposed to use it for another week after I feel better, if this ever happens, to make sure my lungs are operating properly again. I’m still drinking hippie tea, too, so my bases are covered.
Of course, this is a long weekend. You know how extra time off always leads to some kind of Calamity Suzy episode! My goal is to feel less crappy when I return to work on Tuesday. Can she do it? Stay tuned…
A YEAR AGO: A visit to the past, my favorite place.
FIVE YEARS AGO: Showers bringing flowers.
TEN YEARS AGO: Flowering plums and Meyer lemons.