Friday, December 13, 2013

Living in the Bronchs


If you are the kind of person who is in the habit of having arch enemies, then may I suggest you find a way to give them bronchitis? Of course, when you do this, you want to be careful to avoid getting it yourself. In fact, if you like, you can bring your arch enemy to me and I will cough on them free of charge if you follow this blog. I can guarantee results as I have been sick since the 5th of December with the nastiest case of bronchitis on the planet. Seriously, no one has ever been this sick, and no one ever will be.

I think this actually started a few years ago. As a way to celebrate the Christmas holidays, every year, my body gets bronchitis. Last year was particularly bad. So bad in fact, that it didn't clear up until the beginning of summer; and to this day if I walk in the cold or walk up my terribly long, steep driveway, I still get the taste of blood in my mouth. I noticed this a few times throughout this last year, but paid no attention to it beyond, “huh”. On the other hand, if I break a nail, I am distraught and worry that I might not have taken my vitamins lately. Seriously.

December 5th rolled around, like it does, and I woke up feeling a little ill. By the end of the night I was burning up with a fever and when I would cough I'd get a bloody taste in my mouth. If I had sat down on December 4th and planned out how I wanted the next day to go, none of what happened would have been on that list. I spent the next few days alternating between having a fever and chills to sweating through every pore in my body and defining my space in the bed; the dry part being Dan's and the soggy part being mine. I had no idea eyelids could sweat, but mine did.

The coughing is particularly harsh. If you snorted gas fumes and then swallowed a lit match, that would still not hurt as bad as this cough – mostly because the fuel would be in your lungs and the match, which would have gone out, would be in your stomach, but I digress. I started seeing tiny flecks of blood and while I am aware that they are simply caused by throat irritation, I began having this dramatic fantasy a' la Moulin Rouge, where I am slowly wasting away from a vague disease and an intense, melancholy man with good hair falls desperately in love with me, but realizes it only too late as I am already near death's doorstep and nothing more can be done for me. I even have him pictured at the funeral, alone, behind a distant oak tree, tears pouring from his red eyes. He says a private goodbye to me and drives away foreswearing love and forever changed by my gentle ways. Ha! How's that for a death scene?

As it is, I am not going to have a death scene fit for daytime TV, nor am I getting much better. Right now I am simply sitting in a stagnant state of coughing so hard that I occasionally lose control of my bladder, mid-cough and have to go clean up, and running out of breath walking down the hall to the bathroom to clean up. When I showered a day ago, it hurt so bad and I couldn't breathe for so long that when I got out I stood in the bathroom, shivering in a towel and cried for a minute until I realized that crying was not going to get me any warmer, so I decided to get dressed instead. I may just forgo showering all together until summer when this clears up. My family should love that! Dan has brought home nourishment in the form of pizza, take out Chinese food, burgers, fries and almost anything that can be handed to a person in a car from a window. This is good, at least I know they are all eating something, and I haven't got the strength to really care what it is. I may buy them a package of gummy bears so they will have some fruits and vegetables, but that's as much as I can do at this point.

So, in conclusion, bronchitis is a dirty whore, and if you would like to infect someone special in your life, feel free to follow my blog and then drive them to my house. I would make house calls, but I'm almost certain I am not allowed to drive with this much medicine in my system.

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