Mt. Everest to Death Valley in 3 EZ Steps
Mt. Everest to Death Valley in Three Easy Steps
Boy did I feel great, no pain, clear sinuses, energy plus, felt like 25 years old. For about a day, or better yet a part of a day. But it was real, and it felt like a beginning. Turned out to be more a beginning of the end…of that feeling. The turn was just a little tickle in my throat. A “dry cough.” Not like the “productive cough” they always ask you about when you show up at the doctor’s office. Usually followed up with a, “What color is it?” “What color is WHAT!? “ I always feel like asking. The copious amount of thick bodily fluid commonly referred to as “mucous” or less delicately “snot.” The color, you want to know what color it is? My mucous?
Why is it when you say, “Mucous Membrane” it sounds so clinical, but “Mucous” a product of said membrane is disgusting. “That snot funny.” Ha ha ha ha . vs. That’s not funny….” How rude and disgusting you are. ANYWAY when they ask my what color it is, I want to say, “How the hell should I know, I either spit in a tissue, or a body of water, a sink or toilet, or if outside a grassy area, but either way I don’t examine it with a spectrometer to see WHAT COLOR IT IS!”
But I know they are looking for infection, GREEN being normal color, and YELLOW a sign of infection and imminent death. So I do my best to check it out. Quickly. In the shower on its way down the drain. But MOSTLY…I am not usually in a position to expectorate the globs of nastiness that my productive cough has wretched screaming and kicking out of the darkest regions of my lungs into the back of my throat preferring to quickly redirect it into my esophagus and into the bowels of my stomach where the acid content of my stomach dispatches the nastiness.
They check my ears: clear, listen to my lungs: Breath deep…HACK …COUGH… HACK…Sorry. Lungs sound a little raspy. Nose: Ooh a little inflamed, probably a sinus infection. Take 10 days of Augmentin and let me know how you feel.
Now usually, the 10 day Anti-biotic does the trick, but these days….crazy weather, bugs and viruses all over, not to mention POLLEN, and my aging immune system that used to laugh a this stuff as it kicked its ass leaving me to go about my business WITHOUT FEELING LIKE MY HEAD IS A BALLOON FILLED WITH J-E-L-L-O! A week, ten days, two weeks, back to the doctor, three weeks back again, “Gonna step you up to the Steroids. Five days, two pills a day Prednisone, should do the trick.”
Still have a few stragglers, not stuck in my lungs, now they are lurking in my throat, not quite up, not quite down, like a frog in my throat that makes my voice sound, well croaky like a frog, leading me to act like a Tourettes Sydrome sufferer clearing my throat after every two or three sentences. “How long you had that tic man?’
I am feeling better, and the Prednisone, unbeknownst to me was sending me on missions of achievement: I went through all my investment portfolio and compared the charges for each mutual fund with my holdings to compute the annual cost of that fund, then went to compare their earnings over the last two years with that cost. Put the funds in descending order from the best returns to least, noting that the cost was pretty much the same hovering on either side of 1%. Then I analyzed all the funds dividing them by taxed now/ not taxed later; not taxed now/taxed later; not taxed now /not taxed later using circles of descending size from largest to smallest account. Had them all labeled on one sheet of paper for comparison.
Oh, then I planned out the College Tour, by looking at the geographic locations of each of the Florida schools Sade was interested in visiting, and mapping out which order to see them in, marking miles and travel time in between and assigning them Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, AM/PM (Day 1 was travel only) from Tallahassee, to Jacksonville, to Gainesville, to mom in Dunnellon, to Orlando, to Tampa and Vero to spend some down time with family.
It wasn’t until I returned a call to answer a question about Special Education Law for a former colleague and friend that she pointed out that one of the side effects of Prednisone is a rather pleasant mania. OMG! I thought. No wonder I have been running around like a madman solving all these problems. And I just thought it was because I wasn’t sick any more. Go figure… So this is what a “Performing Enhancement Drug” does. Like a “Mind Expanding Drug” except leaning toward being more productive rather than far far less.