So a couple weeks back I wrote about having a cold. Well, the sniffling stopped, the sneezing stopped, and the coughing...well it never went away. In my typical, stubborn, I-don't-want-to-go-to-the-doctor sort of way, I decided the best thing to do was to ignore it and keep coughing. That changed the night my wife asked why I was breathing so fast. I said I wasn't breathing fast, especially since I was just sitting there, not exerting myself with heavy exercise like bending over to tie my shoes, reaching for more cookies, or grabbing the remote to change the channel. When she pointed out that I indeed was breathing fast, I started getting worried. One possible cause could be pneumonia or any other number of pfunny gnamed illknesses.
So, first thing the next day I called the doctor and scheduled an appointment for later that day. The two things I can always count on with my obsessive-compulsive doctor is that no matter what I am there for I have to be humiliated with the scale, and that he will be at the very latest on time. And that is exactly what happened, after finding out I was fat (again) I was taken back to see the doctor...early! While the nurse was pointing out that I was fat and taking my blood pressure, she scared me by telling me how rampant pneumonia has been this year. My doctor came in and had me take several deep breaths, much more than usual, which seemed like a pretty sadistic thing to do to someone that was having trouble breathing. Finally, he told me to take a deep breath, and breathe it out as fast as I could, which resulted in my coughing very hard, getting light headed, and almost falling off the exam table. That caused him to giggle a little and tell me that people usually get lightheaded if they come in in my state and do that, which made me wonder why, if most people get lightheaded and almost fall off the table, why didn't he put himself in some sort of position to catch me? Anyway, he narrowed it down to walking pneumonia or viral bronchitis, and told me to go to the hospital right away to get an X-ray.
Because of my medical past, I have been pummeled by radiation so much to the point that my oncologist wants to limit the amount of exposure I have from now on. For those that don't know, radiation builds in your body over time. It starts from the day you were born and keeps adding up until the day you die. I told my doctor that my oncologist (and his good friend) had ordered a chest X-ray as part of my six month post-chemo check-up for the next week and asked if there was anyway I could just get one set of X-rays that would take care of what both my doctor and my oncologist wanted to see (plus then I would only have to pay one co-pay). He thought that was a great idea and wrote the prescription. My doctor sent me on my way, but not without first giving me two free inhalers. He is one of those doctors that feels if drug companies are constantly going to keep coming around and bugging him, he is going to take all the samples he can, and try his best to keep from actually ever writing a prescription for anything, just give away free samples. I don't think that is what the drug reps had in mind, but I certainly appreciate it.
I rush to the hospital just in time to spend the next half an hour filling out paperwork and answering questions between coughs. I finally got in to have my X-rays done and my doctor called the next morning to say I just had bronchitis (which isn't that much easier to spell) and that it looks like I am still cancer free. I still have another week before I hear that officially from my oncologist, but the surprise X-ray and results have definitely cut down on my scanxiety this time around.
So, going on week four since all this started, I am still coughing and according to my doctor, can expect to still be coughing for another two weeks. I am thrilled. In the meantime, I will steer clear of salty foods, keep making people around me scared that I am contagious, and keep my wife and basenjis awake by hacking all through the night. Let's just call it payback for all the kicking that they supposedly do "in their sleep".
I will close by telling the story about the Evil Casket. The Evil Casket started chasing this poor girl one day. No matter where she went the Evil Casket came bouncing after her. The faster she ran, the faster the Evil Casket bounced. She ran into her house and locked the door, the Evil Casket knocked the door down. She ran upstairs, and the Evil Casket bounded right up the stairs behind her. She ran into the bathroom and locked the door, and the Evil Casket broke that door down too. Cornered and desperate, the poor girl reached for something, anything to use as a weapon against the Casket. She opened the medicine cabinet, grabbed the Dimetapp, threw at her pursuer, and....the coffin stopped!
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