Back from the dead.
Back from the dead. No really, I am not kidding.
I was sitting at the departure gate in New Orleans last Friday to come home and there was a lady coughing not far from me. I thought to myself, I sure hope Typhoid Mary isn’t sitting next to me on the plane. Lucky for me Bob put me in first class so Typhoid Mary was no where to be seen. Plus, there is that special little curtain that separates first class from the rest of the pack so I felt safe. I fear I put too much trust in a flimsy piece of fabric. I think that curtain needs to be reinforced and perhaps the air for first class should be separated as well. By Sunday I was sneezing and on Monday the coughing started. It went down hill very quickly from there.
Now you have to know that as a child of an old time family doctor we only had three excuses to get out of school or work or to go to the doctor:
# 1. Blood is squirting, not just leaking out of your body. # 2. Your arms or legs are separated from your body by at least two feet. #3. Your temperature is over 105 degrees. Accordingly to these standards I should not have missed any work however there I was laying in bed unable to move. I called the doctor on Tuesday and got an appointment at 2 pm and I only hoped to live long enough to get there. I managed to wash my face and brush my teeth but couldn’t quite brush my hair or put on a bra. Yeah, I was sick, cause we all know my feelings about a good under wire bra. After a thorough exam she put me on antibiotics. Did I have to go there for that, even I knew I needed antibiotics and I could have just stayed in bed and not gotten all dolled up? She also suggested Mucinex – more on that later. I loaded up on all my meds at the CVS and went home to medicate. Let me tell you about that Mucinex. That is some wild stuff. I had dreams, I mean crazy dreams with colorful strings and flowers and my head was all fuzzy and my heart was racing. It was like dropping acid. Why would anyone buy illegal drugs when you can just go into any drug store and buy this stuff? And they know this stuff is bad cause they have little picture cards of the drugs you take to the cash register and they dispense the actual drugs from there after they have scanned your driver’s license. You are in fact rationed as to how much you can purchase as recorded on your license. Bet you didn’t know that did ya? By Wednesday I was feeling slightly better after having taken 3 doses of the antibiotics. I was now able to pick up the thousands of pieces of discarded tissue I had thrown around my bed after blowing my nose, being was too tired to find the trash can. I gathered up the multiple paper cups my family insisted I use so as not to give them my germs. And I was able to leave my bed chamber where I had been quarantined. My recovery was short lived. Thursday I was much sicker. Now I was sure I was going to die. My throat was swollen and I couldn’t swallow. My nose was stuffed and I couldn’t breathe. And with the help of the Mucinex I wondered about all the sick people before the invention of antibiotics who surely would have died from this ailment. Maybe this was the bug that didn’t respond to antibiotics. Maybe it was the super bug. I have never been this sick. I have never missed 5 days of anything in my life. Maybe this was how I was going to die. I was just going to succumb and waste away slowly but surely from a little germ I got on an airplane. How sad. I stopped taking the Mucinex. My mind cleared up but my head filled with snot. I ran out of tissues and resorted to wearing scarves of toilet paper around my neck, tearing off pieces as I needed them. I wished I had gotten the soft toilet paper as the 1000 piece roll of Scott was a little scratchy. I longingly watched a commercial for tissues infused with aloe and vitamin E and wished I had a box of them. I had to rub some Vaseline around my nose as I was getting a little chafed from all the blowing and by this time my lips were really chapped and hurting so I smeared the Vaseline there as well. And what the hell, I hadn’t done my daily facial moisturizing routine in days so I slathered the Vaseline all over my face. I was really shiny. For future reference the Vaseline makes the snot run down you face really fast and you don’t feel it until it hits your lip. This is not only gross but triggers an instant reflex to raise your arm and swipe your face with your sleeve. Yuk! But, I no longer cared. I was covered in snot, my eyes were watering and I was drooling with every cough. My hair stuck straight up like a rooster. I hadn’t bathed in days. I hadn’t eaten anything but toast with my meds and I was starving but not hungry. I was dying. No one wanted to be near me so my only friends were on the National Geographic channel. I went from Caesar Milan fixing dogs to a mechanic fixing an amphibious car. I called the doctor to say I was dying. She had me double up on the antibiotics. I waited. I slept. I took more drugs. I watched Caesar fix pit bulls that ate people’s furniture and carpets and that I would have sent to the pound. I learned that baseball bats are made from ash wood and that the logo is placed on the weakest part of the bat. I learned that a bicycle chain has 114 links, and that there are 24 tomatoes in a bottle of ketchup. None of this information was helping me get better. I was going to die with a head full of useless facts and snot.
And then the miracle of antibiotics kicked in. I started to get better. Thank you Alexander Fleming! Where would we be without penicillin and all of it’s friends! DEAD.
It is now Friday and although I am not well I am certainly better. I am still coughing, my head is throbbing, but I have been able to cast off my toilet paper scarf and I ate some crackers. I think I am going to live. The point of this whole post is no matter what else is going on in your life, if you are sick, it all takes a back seat. So take care of yourself, because if you can’t breathe- nothing else matters. And don’t forget to stop and smell the flowers because that’s one fo the first things that go when you can’t breathe anymore!
Faux Farm Girl
Annie