Sick Day #7

09:58:39 AM: Heather’s TurkeySick symptoms improved yesterday. That gave me some hope. And by the end of the day I was feeling somewhat better than I had the day before at the same time. My nose wasn’t as congested… a nice step in the right direction. And my body pains weren’t there. I started to think that I was finally getting over this thing.

I went to bed but started coughing uncontrollably. Every time I'd breathe in I’d feel a tickle that was quickly followed by a painful cough. I was up all night. By 6am I was exhausted. The coughing fits are probably a good core ab workout though. I have snot dripping down from my nasal passages and sinuses. Then I have this thick light green junk coming up from my lungs. Then my body convulses its core muscles to propel one of the two, or both, at high velocity into the tissues at the back of my throat. By 4am the junk was pink… blood. But with the luxury of a new data point every few seconds I was able to gargle water and see clear green junk which told me that the blood was coming from my throat, not my lungs. Yeah, I know… who needs doctors when you’ve got logical deduction.

Finally I bit the bullet and took some Vick’s Formula 44. Recall this particular bottle from a cold last year where I self-laboratoried to isolate the effects of each of the active ingredients in cold meds. This product was a single-ingredient one… dextromorphan hydrobromide. A cough suppressant, it promised to stop the coughing fits and let me rest. I was completely against it but needed to rest.

I did get some sleep. About an hour and a half. But then the cough came back and woke me up as the meds wore off.

Now I have the cough *and* the goofy cold meds feeling, soon to turn to paranoia, I’m sure. Welcome to TurkeySick Day #7.

What’re you lookin’ at punk?

05:59:16 PM: Good news: I'm signed up for insurance with Blue Cross Blue Shield. In the end we were both too exhausted to do too much research and if this turned out to be bird flu then we wanted me to have some coverage. Thanks to everybody who offered advice... we'll regroup in a couple months when they jack up the monthly

Bad news: I can't get to sleep. For the second time in 48 hours I've put my head down only to have it rudely awakened after a short period of time by this convulsion cough. I may have to dip into the cold meds again... or take Kelly's JD and lemon advice. Ouch.

06:02:01 PM: Other good news: Even I'm starting to get a good laugh at the lunacy of this cold/flu.