Fun times

I wish I could say the last few days contained enough experiences to be able to do some inspired writing, but most of the time was spent dealing with the here and now of then, and less with the “if I were to incorporate this into a character, how would I go about that?”

Me spiraling

On Tuesday, I woke up with a bad chest cold. Congested, but regular energy levels, I toddled off to work, did some final tweaks on our video teleconference setup with my West Coast counterpart, and all in all had a nice, if snotty, day.

Wednesday I woke up suffocating. It wasn’t the commute that stopped me from going to work, it was the exceedingly lethargic mammoth part of my brain stepping in and suggesting some hibernation. As my poor wife can attest, when I’m sick, I tend to sleep. A lot. Like, 23 hours a lot. Normally, at the end of one these marathons, I wake up refreshed and healed and ready to go back out into the world.

Not so Thursday. I went though Wednesday night with the increasing feeling that I couldn’t breathe, and so Thursday morning I conceded to going to a Doctor. Who then told me I had two choices – have my wife drive me over to the ER, or he would have an ambulance take me there.

In the end I was diagnosed with bronchitis, complicated by the mild form of asthma I have (which I didn’t even know about until around 11:30 yesterday morning when my doctor commented, in what I believe to be a heavy Ukrainian accent, “with your history of treatments, I can only conclude you have form of asthma. No one has told you this before??”).

To get to the final diagnosis, of course, involved chest x-rays, an EKG, blood work*, 3 nebulizer treatments, and a lot of waiting. In a hospital gown. Alone. No TV, or at least no controller for the turned off tv way high up off the floor. Alone because I had Kim drop me off – I didn’t know how long I would be, and she had enough to worry about with the other girls, etc., she didn’t need to be sitting around a sick hospital with Tara waiting for me to be rolled back. And utterly bored. I tried doing what had come so natural the last few days, namely sleeping, but that kept getting interrupted by the beeping on the blood oxygen machine (blood oxygenation was one of my big problems yesterday).

*My heartfelt appreciation to the purple haired girl that took my blood, by the by. Many technicians settle for stabbing my arm a half dozen times, then doing the same on the other arm, until eventually they get something. She wisely, expertly, and painlessly inserted a needle in the top of my left hand that took blood, left no bruises, and was actually the most “pleasant” blood letting I’ve ever had. The vampire joke was also appreciated, especially since I don’t believe it was A) the slightest bit related to halloween or B) anything to with what she was doing. Yay vampire girl at Mary Washington Hospital 🙂

So I’m supposed to check back in with my Doctor (just scheduled for Tuesday morning). I guess one of the things I need to learn about is what I’m supposed to do long term for the asthma. What I got out of yesterday is it isn’t full scale, walk slow or risk using an inhaler asthma, but since this is the first its been brought up, I’m kind of clueless.

And all of this means I didn’t get to do my zombie transformation today, which is kind of disheartening to me. I had this grand scheme of going to work looking normal (for me), walking around, then partway through the morning sneaking off to a bathroom, shaving off most of my beard (was going to do a full shave for my #nanowrimo challenge anyway), applying fake wounds and makeup, spraying some shocks of white in my hair, and then to go thrashing through the office transformed into a brain eating ghoul. Instead I’m left with the much lamer digital ghost costume – you can see me online, but always just missing me when you stop by my office.

2 thoughts on “Fun times”

  1. Oh Ye Gods, what would possess me to use a photo of myself, sick, for a blog post??? Given that there is no backspace on the internet, I see no choice but to leave this up. And to start using pictures of more charming (or better touched up) pictures in the future. Maybe of cats. Or dogs.
    [UPDATE]
    For the record, I am updating the update of the update. I have replaced the image previously known as me sick with something less straining on the eye – a classic B&W TV test pattern. Enjoy.

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