After a week (or weak) of coughing, snorting, hacking, sniffling, wheezing, whining, blowing, gasping, and honking I think I have almost beaten this cold. According to my wife I was just complaining and it wasn't that bad, until she caught it four days later. I maintain, that if she would have taken better care of me, she wouldn't have gotten it. However, since she just left me to flounder, I remained sick and infectious and she caught it from me.
I think the worst part of this cold or any cold, is when you start coughing without end. Although a few blogs ago I was saying I finally felt like I was over my incision pain, I was coughing so bad a few days ago, I was afraid I was going to rip it back open again. Luckily I didn't.
When the coughing started, I reached for my tried and tested Dimetapp Children's. Not being able to take anything with any alcohol, this is my usual goto remedy for coughing and itchy throats. However, I haven't taken any since I had chemo. Tired from wiping, coughing, and spitting all day, I took the maximum dose of Dimetapp and laid down to enjoy a sound night of slumber. Five hours later, I was still waiting for slumber, or at least for the monkeys in my head to quit typing. OK, there were not any actual monkeys typing, but my mind was racing so much, it felt like there were approximately one thousand and two monkeys typing on old fashioned manual typewriters with worn out ribbons. I don't know why it had to be worn out ribbons. Maybe they weren't monkeys, they were gibbons and that is where I got the "ribbons" from. Anyway, I couldn't concentrate on sleeping if that makes sense.
Ever since chemotherapy, anything with diphenhydramine (like Benadryl) instead of making me tired, makes me wide awake and has my mind racing. I guess it's a good thing I've never done meth. My mind would be racing and I would never get anything done from the diphenhydramine. Meth addicts get a lot done right? And diphenhydramine is one of the things they make meth with right? Yup, it is, I just looked it up. Now I am probably on some government list for looking it up.
Well, with the Dimetapp a failure, I was even sicker from not getting any sleep. So, I slept all day and completely screwed up my sleep pattern, which helps in healing too. Eventually, through the use of Lifesavers and Luden's I was able to make it through the sandpaper-against-the-back-of-the-throat days to now where I feel almost normal....for me.
The caveat is that now I have a coughing wife keeping me awake and a coughing basenji. I know you are probably wondering why my dog is coughing, and frankly we are too. My mother-in-law's theory is that she caught the cold from us. Now while I don't think she caught our cold, I do think this basenji is hacking because of it. Lately, she has had a smorgasbord of Kleenex's lying around. Now before you say "Ooh, boogie eating dog!" I am not talking about used Kleenex's. It's just that we have had boxes of Kleenex's within arm's reach of every flat/cushioned surface in the house, and that to Daisy the basenji is a lot like having a beer tap with mouth's reach of an alcoholic. Because a Kleenex box works much like a beer tap, more just keeps magically appearing.
So, I don't think Daisy is coughing from a cold, I think she is coughing from eating several cases of Kleenex the past few days. And although Kleenex may be a welcome relief on a runny nose, I can imagine it would tickle the back of your throat if you ate one, or a box. At any rate, our vet didn't seem too worried, and just in case she gave us medicine to fix every possible thing it could be. Which made me jealous. I think next time I have a cough I will just go to the vet. She's cheaper than our doctor too.
Anyway, with the weather warming up, I am hoping to be well enough to get out and enjoy it. Hopefully my wife will feel better soon too (because unlike toughing it out like I did, she whines a lot). Plus I am getting wore out from waiting on her hand and foot.
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