So...I've been sick for the last few days. Like, as sick as I've been in years. Sore throat, deep and painful cough, nose both crusty and runny, and even my eyes got into the mix---Kaiser's physician's assistant told me it was viral conjunctivitis.
At least it wasn't bacterial? Whatever---it's still goopy and gross.
The cough has been worse at night, as this compounds the difficulties breathing: my throat gets worse because my mouth opens when my nose closes, and then the cough convulses me awake, covered in drool. Awesome picture.
Last night I picked up some dextromethorphan-only cough syrup. I filled the cup and gulped it down.
Nothing.
I knew it would take upwards of forty minutes to kick in, to when I would get a little dopey, chest relaxed, and then head to bed. So when I mentioned 'Nothing' a second ago, I mean that it was doing nothing an hour after having swigged it.
Every time I coughed it was one of those deep, nearly never-ending types. Now it was really late and I needed to get my ass in bed, so I chugged back another shot of the syrup, brushed my teeth, and slinked off to bed as Corrie watched episodes of "Bones" on Netflix.
Whenever it was she came to bed I had a coughing fit. Had I been asleep? As I convulsed in the dark, a colorful lattice shimmered in my field of version. With each cough it intensified, and it was when I noticed that one of the lattice structures was a pot-leaf that I learned I'd inadvertently dosed myself.
Whoops.
From that point on I would go through patterns of 90 minutes "asleep" and 40 minutes "awake", with those quotes being necessary because I'm not sure there was a whole lot difference between those two states last night.
For a lengthy time I was a member of the investigative team at the fictional Jeffersonian from Corrie's "Bones" show. Half the time I was a trainer of the young whelps, showing them how to read the breaths from the recently deceased. The other half the time I was the conduit through which the dead breathed. If only the young interns could record my breathing. Each breath was from a different person.
I moved out to the couch at some point, probably because I was self-conscious about my routine: breathe, breathe, breathe, coughing spasm, snoring fit, loud fart, turn over, repeat. I remember Tux looking comfortable on the couch and not wanting to move him, and since the blanket that's out front is small-ish, I figured I could curl up on the big half between him and the edge.
Legs curled up, barely covered under a lap blanket, I got back to my whacked out training routine. Tux never budged.
Lucky for me, today was a conference.
