Let me start this off by saying, I am not trying to be one of those people that has a health complaint every time you are around them. No, I just have a health complaint that I would like to keep to myself, but unfortunately affects everyone around me.
See, about a month ago we traveled down to Florida. It was sunny and hot everyday, most days getting into the 90's. And as things usually go in that kind of weather, I caught a cold. OK, I can tell that you are confused, here is what happened. One night we went out to eat, and whatever it was did not agree with me, so I was up until the wee hours of the morning dealing with that night's dinner. And as anyone with a baby knows, you certainly are not going to be able to catch up on your sleep in the morning, because the baby doesn't care how late you stayed up, he just knows he is hungry/wet. The next night, I was looking forward to some restful slumber when the weather radio went off stating a tornado was in the area. In the area of the country I spend most of my time in, I would have turned on the TV for a detailed report and if need be, pulled out the futon in the basement and dragged everyone downstairs until the danger was over. Unfortunately, most homes on the Florida coast do not have basement and if they do they are called indoor pools. My wife, being very supportive, decided not even waking up to the loud alarm next to her head would be the best course of action. Not wanting to push everyone into a closet (the only interior room in the house we were staying at) I decided to check out the situation and move everyone in the safe spot only if the situation warranted. What I found out is that in Florida, where several sports teams are named after weather, they apparently don't have anyone at the TV stations that actually knows anything about weather in the middle of the night. After only being able to find a tiny square of a weather map in the corner of the TV that amounted to about four pixels, I decided to just stay up until the Tornado Warning expired to make sure we were safe. That left me up until the wee hours of the morning once again. The next few days were spent preparing to come back home and driving the eighteen hours to get back home, which after it was all said and done, left me very run down, and with a strange tickle in my throat.
So, a few days after getting back from our pre-summer Florida trip I was in full nose dripping, wet coughing, hell. I was kind enough to share this illness with my wife, who never seems to appreciate the gift of sickness. Within a few days, my cold had disappeared except for a little headache that would not let up. My wife wanted quicker relief and went to see our family doctor, who told her that she had developed a sinus infection. Upon hearing this, I was a little worried that my "headache" was really a raging sinus infection like my wife's. I called the doctor and told her I was feeling fully recovered except for the headache and she prescribed some antibiotics to clear things up. Pretty soon the headache was gone...and an annoying, constant, irritating cough developed. Not like the one before where random pieces of lung seem to be flying out of your trachea, this is just a cough that sounds like the cough people do when they aren't really sick, but they are calling in sick to work, except this cough is real and relentless.
Here is where I am today, nearly a month later and feeling pretty good, just sounding like a guy faking a cough constantly. And the best part about it, anything extra sweet, salty, or tangy, causes it to get worse! The past two weeks, friends have asked me to come to their places of business to help them with projects, and in return they feed all the people that helped out. The problem is, I am afraid to eat around people, because invariably the cough gets worse, and if there is anything to get you uninvited to future gatherings, it is sounding like you have the plague around people while they are eating. So while everyone else is socializing and having a bite, I am running off to a vending machine and nibble/coughing in a hallway somewhere.
Well, today I realized how much this is really affecting my life. My son, being six months old, is just now trying to verbalize and mimic actions and sounds that he experiences. While sitting with him and feeding him, I had a coughing fit, and he looked me right in the eyes while I was trying to compose myself...and coughed some fake sounding coughs. Now coughing isn't out of the ordinary for him while he is enjoying his bottle, because in his mind, he is very hungry, and trying to shotgun five ounces of milk in one second is the best way to stop his hunger pangs. In reality, trying to suck that much milk into his stomach that quickly leads to choking, coughing, and spitting up all over me, a lesson I have had to learn the hard way. After his cough we just stared at each other, he with his little grin on his face, while I try to figure out if he drank to fast or was he making the same sound daddy was. The grin he gave me was very similar to the grin he gives me while we sit there and make fart noises at each other for hours on in. You know, that cross-between-laughter-and-accomplishment type of grin.
This is why I am frustrated, not because of the constant hacking, or having to eat my meals alone in a dark closet so people won't fear infections from me, it is the effect this may be having on my impressionable young son. No longer do I wonder if his first word will be "mommy" or "daddy". No longer am I worried that his first words will be one of the phrases yelled frequently at the dogs ("Daisy, quit licking your butt!") or the words he hears daddy yell when there is a stupid driver in front of him. No, I am frustrated today because I am afraid that the noise he has been hearing most the past four weeks will be the first one he verbalizes. And in his little memory book, I just don't know how to write down the spelling of "hok-hok-hok-heh-heh-kuuuuurrrrrrkkkk-ptah".
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