If you can believe this, I am STILL SICK.

Yesterday, Monday, was an amazingly horrible day. I awoke with pain in my ear, and with the sore throat, coughing, and sniffles I’d been dealing with all weekend, only worse. I decided to go see the doctor. My wife called (as I was unable to manage much more than an unintelligible croak) and they agreed to see me as soon as I could get there. My doctor’s office is about an hour’s drive from home (closer to work, which is usually more convenient.) I piled my diseased carcass into the car and drove for 45 minutes, whereupon the phone rang. The doctor, it seemed, had a lunch meeting, and while they were sorry I was already on the way, there really wasn’t any point in my coming by for a couple of hours. Thanks. I found a shady spot, reclined my seat, and coughed steadily for an hour and a half, then resumed my journey and arrived just as the doctor was returning. He then sent me in to see his Nurse Practitioner, who’d been there all along. Thanks.

The Nurse Practitioner then summoned an LPN (basic-level nurse) to draw blood work. She proceeded to shove two needles into one arm and one into the other, somehow completely failing to find a single vein, even though they were clearly visible due to the tourniquet which she left applied until my arm was the color of a concord grape. I am usually comforted to see a gray-haired lady coming at me with a needle, because I assume (right or wrong) that she’s more experienced. In retrospect, I might have guessed that anyone who’s still an LPN at that age is not an overachiever. (My mother was an RN, so I do know my nurses. Except this time. Thanks.)

Finally the NP (who was mid-thirties, VERY attractive, and thankfully, quite skilled due to previous ER experience) struck oil on the first drilling and with hardly a sting. She wrote a few prescriptions and sent me on my merry way.

Minutes later I parked at the local Publix Pharmacy to get my prescriptions filled. I hauledl myself out and started walking toward the store. As I tried to put my keys into my pocket, the prescription slips were caught by a sudden gust of wind and went sailing across the parking lot. I began to run comically after them, reaching very nearly full speed when a pair of those concrete curbs suddenly appeared in front of me. I tried to stop, but the laws of physics being more or less unbreakable, I found myself suddenly hurtling in mid-air, horizontally, face down. A quick mental calculation assured me that I was going far too slow to fly, and far too fast to land. I decided to crash, and with that decision made, Mr. Newton’s laws drew the ground toward me very, very fast. I landed hard, with my left ribcage directly over an identical twin of the very curb I’d tripped on at the start of my flight.

Three elderly ladies came over quickly, and asked if I was all right. I would have told them that I was if I had been able to speak, but I eventually had to use the universal hand signal for “OK” as I somehow regained my feet. My first words when I caught my breath were classic … “Did anyone see some prescriptions go by?” If there was any doubt in these ladies’ minds that I needed medication, it vanished at that moment. An instant later, a breathless guy in a Publix apron rushed over and handed me the slips.

It is truly remarkable how bruised ribs, a nearly broken toe, and road rash on your elbows and knees can make you forget all about any other illness, for as long as several minutes. The downside is that the very ribs I bruised play important parts in the symphony of coordinated muscle activity we know as a cough. Luckily, one of the prescriptions was for a powerful cough medicine, one that has reduced my vocabulary over the past two days to one word … that is, if you count “Uhh.” as a word. Scrabble players, put away your dictionaries. Thank you.

I now have two infected ears, which is really much more symmetrically pleasing than just the one. I am still attempting to cough up various vital organs, and am experiencing exquisite pain with each cough thanks to the impression of a parking lot curb in my left chest. i think that, statistically speaking, there are now more parts of me that hurt than parts which don’t hurt. A good fall down a flight of stairs could make this quite a decisive loss, but unless that happens I’ll keep fighting.

Thanks to Henry the Thirstmeister for suggesting a large does of Vitamin P … it’s the only way I got any sleep on Saturday might!

More when I have vanquished these evil organisms. If you don’t hear from me again … they won. 🙂