07 | April | 2008

So yeah… this thing I developed last Friday afternoon?
Rampant snot all weekend, very little sleep (sleeping sitting up irritates me… and the bunnycat) and the Sudafed just wasn’t working anymore. Taking it hourly hasn’t hurt me yet, I have a healthy tolerance for it, but it wasn’t doing much. That’s just a waste.
So I got on the horn to the advice nurse to wheedle an inhaler which generally does the trick.
They asked the standard “cover your ass” questions:
“Can you breathe?” -yes, but it feels like its starting to get a bit squirrelly in there.
“Do you have asthma?” Not for a very long time…don’t worry, I’m not going to drop dead just yet, I just want to head off the snot at the pass before it really takes hold… not to mention, this doesn’t feel like an attack.
Anyhoo, they decided they wanted me to come in anyway, so I got a non-emergency appointment in the afternoon and saw a really cool doctor. No kidding, she rocks and you know my opinion about most doctors who don’t bother to listen.
After slightly freaking out the nurse who took my blood pressure (yes, when you eat sudafed like candy your heart moves along pretty clippily.) and then telling the doc all about the accelerated timeline of this onslaught, the *ahem* various colors involved (nothing yet which indicates infection yet. I know that color…ew.) and letting her listen to the symphony in my lungs (which again, was sloshy but nearly as bad as my lungs used to get-I really didn’t have fun when I was younger. Got a lot better after I laid off the flour…). I told her about sleeping upright contributed to being pretty tired and that it irritated me and the bunny. She seriously asked if I was allergic to my cat and I said, well I’ve had her for 17 years, the timing seems a bit suspect if that is the case… she laughed. Good.
Anyhoo, I got my inhaler, but the next part surprised me… she then said I have noisy lungs and sent me off for a chest xray and gave me antibiotics (which I questioned her about… Are you sure? Yes, dear. Really sure?-its not green yet… Yep. Well OK.) and cough medicine with codeine…
Also, and she said this with her stern voice, that I needed to be at home resting. She blessed off on working at home, but we’ll see how that goes with codeine involved. I’ll probably avoid that stuff as much as I can anyway.
Dang.
Guess it sounded bad in there.
I walked over to xray and they guy handed me some lovely material to put over me then gave me instructions on how much to remove for the xray then walked off.
I do confess I was pondering how to squirrel away the gown because it looked nice and soft and would be great as a quilt. I behaved, but as I was holding it up and turning it around… and around… and around trying to figure out how to actually put it on to cover up the girls I just could not figure out the origami of this particular hospital gown.
So I put my shirt back on and stepped out looking for the guy.
“Um… Hi” I said, after I caught his eye “I know I’ve had a lot of cold medicine, but I have no idea how to put this on.”
He held it up , turned it around like I did, then laughed and handed me one with actual arms.
Phew.
Got that over with, got my meds then went back to work to grab my laptop and made my way home. Not a surprise that everyone was all “Dude, take you and your cooties home!” but in a nice way.
So I’m home… and tired. My brain is doing the microsleep thing here and there, I am reading a knitting mystery, pondering egg salad sandwiches (did I mention that the stupid ulcer I have is letting me eat eggs? Also I ate some onions the other day and didn’t double over in pain! Hooray! Only took 4 fekkin’ years.) and at home for an unspecified period of time.

On a related note, I do have a pretty spectacular spider bite on my arm, and while I am allergic and have reacted very badly in the past, this wheezy stuff happened before I got bit (plus that other bite was on my face and this is on my forearm)…but I’ll be certain to let you know if I can soar through the city easily or walk on the ceiling.
Y’all can all get together and start singing “SpiderFred! SpiderFred! Does whatever a SpiderFred does!”…knitting without needles most likely.