Bad Times

Bad times with the Vicodin cough syrup ;-(

Dad's wicked sore throat

My unfounded optimism yesterday about this "little flu bug" is rapidly waning. Last night was sheer torture. Not only could I not swallow without immense pain, but throughout the night it felt like my airway was closing up every 5 minutes. The only position I found comfortable was sitting up or standing. In desperation I took two of Dana's leftover Vicodin from her pregnancy (which of course she never needed). All that yielded was a very loopy Dan for about 2 hours, then back to misery, plus with a brand new throbbing tension/hangover headache, and nausea.

I guess I should have prefaced this entry by warning you that I am merely here to complain and seek sympathy. But hey, it's my blog, so I'll whimper if I want to.

Quick update on Dana & Alex. They are recovering steadily. Dana still has a scratchy or very slightly sore throat, and Alex is not quite back to his usual chirpy self, but both seem to be pretty comfortable. Dana has been an absolute angel over the past 5 days. Even when she was at the zenith of her own symptoms, she was scurrying about taking care of Alex and I, who generally just rolled around on the floor moaning. I love that woman so much.

Around 10:30, after we'd dropped Alex off with our wonderful sitter Jane, Dana drove me up to the Urgent Care clinic in Fort Collins. We prepared for a lengthy waiting room wait, with our two books and our lackluster conversation. But remarkably, they had me in and out of there in about an hour!

Less remarkable was the news. It does not look like Strep, although they are waiting on lab results in 2 days. Otherwise I'm healthy as a horse. The good Doc just told me to get plenty of rest, fluids, blah blah blah. Then he gave me a huge Rx for Histinex HC, a vicodin-laced cough suppressant, pain reliever and "whatnot". This, after I mentioned that the earlier vicodin experiment made me nauseous. They said it acts more locally. Whatever.

Dana and I have come to take a pretty jaded view of most of the professional medicine racket. By and large, these people just dispense the least litigious advice possible that may or may not be of any help. Generally this means that all we ever get are "duh" answers that I could have either come across in Wikipedia or deduced on my own. (That being said, we have had some wonderful doctors in the past too). Thinking about this situation more, it seems like maybe the Naturopath people are on to something. Although I have not taken the time yet to research it, at least the practitioners are in it to actually help people, and are probably much more likely to TALK to patients, try and find out what's really going on, and actually propose solutions, not just crazy narcotics to mask the symptoms.

I feel pretty lousy all around, particularly for missing so much work right now. We are on the cusp of releasing a major new project to the open source community that has the potential to really help out a lot of projects and communities, and push forward the legitimacy and palatability of lots of really great software. I would usually be at least indifferent to missing a day or so of work, but I feel like I'm living in a vacuum right now. Sorry guys if you're reading this.

So here I am again sitting at home with a fever, unable to drink much water. I just took a dose of the magical elixir and some ibuprofen for good measure. We'll see if I can catch some sleep before it all wears off.

Here's one thing at least that has worked very well:

Fresh peach and yogurt smoothie, yum!

P.S. Thanks again Michael & Moira for that awesome blender. It can blend the rocks off a Colorado 14'er!