Feeling under the weather?
And I don’t mean the snow…
I was too, recently. Despite eating well, exercising, taking vitamins, getting enough sleep, and doing anything else I could to stay healthy, I caught the dreaded “What’s Going Around.”
In this instance, it was a nice case of bronchitis with a big, honking sinus infection on the side.
Oh yeah; I was feeling just fabulous.
I felt like I was coming down with something a few days before. And this tends to send me into a panic, which is not good for either me or my immune system.
“I’m right in the middle of a big project,” I thought. “I don’t have time to get sick right now.”
You know how my body responded?
“Bah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! That’s really funny!” my body said to me. “And, by the way, um, you’re really sick now.”
Boom…it hit me like a ton of bricks.
While I thought I had beat it, one afternoon, suddenly, my throat began to feel like I was swallowing glass, and my nose wouldn’t stop running.
Attractive, right?
Instead of waiting to see if my doctor had an appointment the next day, I asked my husband to go with me to an after-hours care center.
I decided this at 8 p.m.
“You really want to go now?” he asked. “You don’t want to see if you can get an appointment with our doctor tomorrow?”
“I feel like I’m swallowing glass, and I can’t stop coughing, and I’m miserable,” I responded, completely freaking out by this time because of the aforementioned Big Project. “Do you want to stay up all night listening to me cough?”
A few minutes later, we were in the car headed to the care center.
I signed in, and we found seat.
There we sat, right in the middle of the den of germs.
The human petri dishes…
Folks who were sicker than I and had absolutely no problem listening to what their parents taught them when they were kids. You know, to share…
If I hadn’t been sick before, I would have been by now.
Luckily, I didn’t have to wait very long—a benefit of going within a couple hours of closing time (I’m guessing we missed the rush-hour crowd)—and the doctor listened to my symptoms.
All this time, I thought I had strep throat. Nope. I had bronchitis.
Then, she said, “Does this hurt?”
When a doctor says this, unfortunately, a lot of times it is going to hurt. I hate this warning because it freaks me out.
She began tapping on my face.
Does this hurt?
Nope.
This?
Nope.
This?
Owww!!!
“You also have a sinus infection,” she concluded.
Oh joy of joys…
I would like to take a moment to thank the discoverers of antibiotics and codeine, as that’s what she prescribed. Well, cough medicine with codeine.
That night, as I waited for the meds to kick in, I sucked cough drops, drank water, and watched the Olympics.
By the next morning, I no longer had the “swallowing-glass feeling.” But I still had the cough.
You know what’s great about bronchitis?
Nothing.
Not. One. Thing.
But what’s even worse is the lingering cough which seems to last forever.
Or at least a couple of weeks…
You know what’s even better?
When you go out after being on medicine for a week and have a coughing fit in a public place.
People looked at me as though I were Typhoid Mary.
I wanted to tell them that it was okay. I was covering my mouth, and I was no longer contagious.
But I couldn’t. Because I was too busy trying not to cough up a lung.
I’m happy to say that I’m better. My lungs are both where they belong. And swallowing doesn’t hurt anymore.
So if you’re coughing because you’ve gotten “What’s Going Around,” Stay Away from Me!!!!
Remember, I already had my share.
Michele Wojciechowski, who never wants to eat another cough drop again, writes “Wojo’s World®” from Baltimore.