Better Living Through Chemistry

My husband Terry can tell you I'm beyond stubborn when it comes to admitting I get sick. I coughed and snorted through a week of unpleasantness before I caved in. I kee\pt telling him that I know when I need to seek help, because I know my body better than any doctor ever will. I live in it, after all.

I gave up on Sunday. After two nights of sleeping in fifteen-minute increments, and not being able to walk across a room without holding on and stopping for breath and spiking a fever, it was time to seek DRUGS. After all, Terry said, if Big Pharma didn't want us to live better through chemistry, they wouldn't make the drugs.

Since I couldn't talk without going into a coughing jag that left lungs on the floor, Terry called our family doctor. When the receptionist stopped laughing, she said they were down two doctors on Monday and had reached overflow capacity in the waiting room. All patients were being shunted to the emergency room or to doc-in-the-box.

We chose the local doc-in-the-box. Terry drove, since I have so little lung capacity that driving was out of the question. We drove into an empty parking lot. IN FLU SEASON? Based on the hours painted on the door, you can only need urgent medical help between one and eight pm. Back home to sit upright and cough. We returned at 1:10 and were fourth in line. When we left at 4 pm, the waiting room was full and sounded like an outpatient clinic in a tuberculosis ward.

The doc popped out of his box, poked and prodded, asked me to cough (BIG mistake), looked at my electronic health record (all of my doctors are part of a single medical system, so he could pull up EVERYTHING). Then came the diagnoses. Plural.

"You have cute sinisitis." I've never heard of cute sinuses. Then he said, "You have cute bronchitis." Kinda thick accent. Took me a couple of coughs to realize he meant Acute, not cute. And contagious as hell.

Doc-in-the-box believes in throwing the kitchen sink at what's "going around." I left with four prescriptions, two over-the-counter recommendations, and instructions to rest and eat lots of chicken soup. It's good for the soul, he said. I understood got that. Even read the book years ago.

One good thing about not being able to sleep: I got a lot of reading done!

And, because my writing group meets in a retirement community, I'll skip Thursday's meeting. I do NOT infect people when I can avoid it.

Mass Die Offs

We've seen several mass die offs in the news this year. Birds falling out of the sky in Arkansas. Fish popping to the surface of a river, dead. Stink bugs murdered in my house, but the mass die off that flew below the radar screen happened in my chest of drawers.

Over the past two months, undies and socks conspired to expire. One by one, not a pair, but one of two pairs, then two of three pairs, then three of four pairs, etc. Socks with no mates live in isolation, never to be worn again, because there are no matching orphans.

Undies are a different matter. Bought at widely different times, as many as half a dozen developed rips, holes or tears within a couple of weeks. What's with this? Why did so many give up the elastic at the same time?

I personally think it is a conspiracy designed to get women to go to their favorite shop and buy more socks and underwear. Thank goodness I had the forethought to ask for socks for Christmas and my birthday. One can never have too many pairs of socks. As for the underwear, I didn't think I needed any, so no letters to Santa for new "mentionables."

How weird is it that the mass die off didn't extend to my husband's chest of drawers? Yup. It's a conspiracy.