Well here's all that's happened with this wonderful illness that refuses to go away. Wednesday August 27, Dec21 and I went away for a little romantic trip. I had a sore throat that day but it wasn't too bad and I wanted this romantic trip too much to put it off. Well the trip was great..very romantic. However we did get a shocker when we were checking in and the girl checking us in happened to be Cousin Bimbo!!!! We were about an hour out of town in a city where we knew no one and my cousin works in the hotel we're staying at!! What are the odds?? That's not a sarcastic comment..I'm serious..what are the damn odds of that??

Now maybe this next part wasn't too smart but I've never claimed to have an extremely high I.Q. Dec21 showed me where the pool was and neither of us had brought any swimming outfits. I didn't because I can't stand how I look in a bathing suit. I look like a whale in heat and in the water I look like a beached whale. Dec21 didn't bring anything either because I didn't. Well once we got there we sat by the pool. Well I decided even though I had on a long sleeved shirt and tight black pants I was getting in the pool. So..I..umm..did!! No one else was in the pool and there was only one other person even nearby and he was reading a newspaper. After a few minutes of freezing my ass off I did something even I never thought I'd have the guts to do. I took off my shirt and swam around in just pants and a sports top. The sports top was skimpy enough to look like a bikini top. I even walked back in the room like that. Feeling a bit self conscious of course but I still did it. I'm not sure if this was a sign that maybe I'm not hating my body as much as I usually do and I'm getting a few more balls of steel or perhaps it's a sign of insanity.

I coughed some that night but nothing too bad. The next day we came home and I stayed in bed a bit. I wasn't feeling too great later in the day and I got overheated and my temperature got up to 100.4. I'm not sure if that's something to worry about or not but it came down. Friday came and I didn't start feeling worse until it was passed time to call the doctor. So I was stuck going thru the weekend on nothing but dayquill and nightquill. I coughed pretty regularly, the sore throat had pretty much passed and I was feeling generally icky. For every 24 hours, I was in bed for 20 of those hours. Anytime I got up I felt like I just had a small amount of strength. Saturday and Sunday my voice had decided to go bye bye. I got thru those days with a lot of luck and some TLC from my sweet and wonderful husband. I was terrified of him getting sick so I kept a rag with me all the time and even slept with it over my mouth so I wouldn't breathe on him. I also avoiding kissing him which trust me..was harder than trying to keep my lungs from benig coughed up. ;))

Monday I started feeling a little better..however I still felt like shit. It was getting harder to breathe and I was wishing I had went to the doctor Friday. Just one more day I thought. It wasn't officially decided until Tuesday morning to go to the doctor. I was laying in bed just staring at the wall and I realized that I could lie there and keep feeling sick or I could get off my ass and go to the doctor and maybe start getting better. So Dec21 called the doctor and got me an appointment for 11:30. There was an appointment for 10:45am but he didn't think we could get ready in time to get there. My reaction to that was "Wanna bet??" I wanted to get to the doctor as soon as possible, get some medicine in me and start feeling better damn it. I would have gone to the doctor's in pajamas and my hair sticking up if I had to.

Before we left Dec21 gave me a glass of orange juice. You would think that would be a good thing. I've always been told that if you are sick drink orange juice..it helps. Pardon me while I laugh at that advice. We got there a couple minutes early. Not that it did any good since the doctor was running behind, there were several people in the waiting room and there were a couple of idiots in suits trying to sell their new drugs or whatever to the doctor. I felt like telling them to go fuck themselves and bug her some other time. Well I started getting really really hot and sweating. I couldn't figure it out and Dec21 wasn't hot at all. Not to mention this dumb woman was there with her husband going on and on about him spitting up flemm and mucus. She was saying things like "So it can just come up anytime?? Just out of the blue like right here grey flemm could just start flying out right here in front of everyone?!?!" I was like "FOR CHRIST'S SAKE SHUT UP!!!!" She did this for about 20 minutes and what's really weird is that she seemed amused by the whole thing. It was like she found it just SOOOO cool and fascinating that she wanted to actually see it happen.

Finally I felt like I had to get out of there. I couldn't breathe right and I was freaking out. Dec21 walks with me outside and I'm pacing back and forth. He tries to hold me to help me feel better but at that moment being touched in any way made me feel worse. I went back inside, went to where the doctor and the nurse were talking and I asked for a drink and I told them I couldn't breathe right. I was worried I was going to die right there or be taken to the hospital and then die. I thought I would either die or pass out. The nurse brought me a drink and led me to an exam room. Not even 2 seconds before I walked in there..BLAHHHHHHHHH. I threw up..not once..not twice..but THREE TIMES!!!!

The nurse passed by to bring me a rag..seeing me throwing up what tiny bit of stuff I had in me and said "Aww bless her heart." Forget blessing my heart..make me better damn it!! Also..my mother always says "bless (whoever's) heart". I find that quite odd that they both say that and are in the same field (medicine). Anyways..according to Dec21 I was very pale and sweaty. He saw me throw up and said "Oohhh I didn't need to see that." Oh really?? Well I just had to look up at him and say "Well I didn't need to DO that." Awww poor thing he had to see me throw up..and here all I did was actually do the throwing up. Poor guy.

The doctor came in and I asked a question I was half serious in asking but said with a serious tone. The question was "So am I going to die??" She said I wasn't. She asked questions, did a quick exam and confirmed I had bronchitis and the bronchitis was what was causing me to make it harder to breathe. THANK YOU!! Finally a diagnosis and telling me the breathing problems I was having was from the bronchitis. Both my mother and Dec21 told me I was just nervous and having anxiety attacks. EXCUSE ME but I have had anxiety attacks and I know what they feel like...the having problems breathing was NOTHING like anxiety attacks but it took the doctor saying so before they would believe me. Oh silly me for thinking I actually knew my body.

The doctor gives me prescriptions for 2 different kinds of medicine. One to help me get better, the other to help with the breathing. Ironic isn't it?? We pay 20 dollars to see a doctor who hands over 2 sheets of paper that we then have to take to another place to get medicine that we then have to pay another price for. So we're basically paying 20 dollars for pieces of paper with writing on them. When we got home we figured out what made me so sick. The orange juice that Dec21 gave me. Apparently it's been awhile since we've cleaned the fridge. The expiration date was August 16th!!! Here it was the first week of September and he's giving me orange juice that expired 3 weeks ago!!!!!!! SHIT!! He said he looked at it and thought it was the beginning of August instead of September. Okay I'm not mad at him but damn that's scary. It's even scarier that I didn't even notice the orange juice tasting any different.

For the next couple days I take a lot of medicine, eat a lot of fast food, do my best not to get anyone sick, lay in bed, get on the computer a LITTLE, watch tv and cough my brains out. The breathing improves..my voice continues to decline to the point where I don't even have a hoarse voice..it was 90% whisper. By Friday my voice starts coming back in hoarse form and I am still coughing all over the place. We call the doctor who prescribes medicine for cough. So now I am on 5 different kinds of medicine. Three for the bronchitis, birth control pills and paxil. I'm a walking medicine chest.

This passed Saturday comes and I'm still coughing and if that's not bad enough I have a little coughing fit while out with my parents and cough up about 2 cup fulls of flemm and mucus all over myself in the back seat of their car. Goody goody. It was gross and I'm sure my parents and Dec21 just LOVED it...NOT!! I didn't know whether to feel a bit self conscious and embarressed or start my "it's not my fault" and "I can't help it" speeches. All they had for me to use was a little paper napkin that was only able to clean my shirt and my mouth. But then more came up. My parents pulled over..I cough up more. I do my best not to cough until they drop us off at home and then I cough up even more of the shit. All that shit was in my lungs just sitting there partying up a storm. We got back in the car with them and I coughed some more but for the most part the mucus and flemm had either ran out of ingredients for a few or no more was coming out.

Sunday came and I'm getting better but still coughing up a bit of that shit. I even coughed up a little blood which scared the hell out of me but apparently that was caused by all the coughing and it apparently scratched or scraped my throat. Oh great. My mother kept telling me try not to cough so much. Gee mom do you think I didn't think of that?? Every time I try to hold in a cough I wind up feeling like I'm going to explode or not breathe completely right. She gets mad if I hold in a sneeze but she tells me to hold in a cough. Go figure.

So here I am Monday night..not really feeling sick but still coughing some with a bit of that shit but not much. My mother thinks I should go back to the doctor. Maybe I don't know. I think as long as I am getting better..I'm not coughing as much as I was and I don't really feel sick why pay another 20 dollars?? Dec21 has been SO good to me. Well except for the orange juice incident. He's held me, cuddled with me, not worried himself getting sick, brought me drinks and meals and taking care of me 24/7. I still need to figure out what I did to deserve him and how sweet he is to me. I know I couldn't get thru this or anything for that matter without him. He's the best. Now if he could just invent a pill that would get me COMPLETELY better he'd be perfect.