The Family That Ails Together: It’s Snot for Everybody

Song Lyric of the Day:

Once you get the feeling it / Wants you back for more / Says it’s gonna heal it but / You won’t make the call / One step back you’re leaving it

Bombay Bicycle Club / “Shuffle“

It has not been a lot of fun around our house of late. First Coraline got diagnosed with a double ear infection, then Rich got sick, then I got sick, and we’ve all been sick since. I think I’m on day eight or nine of this sinus infection/bacterial infection. It’s been an utter delight, not being able to breathe through my nose, coughing so hard my chest hurts, feeling so run down I get exhausted just thinking about doing stuff (forget actually doing it), and the phlegm. Oh dear God in heaven, the phlegm. The good people at Kleenex should be sending me thank you notes at this point for driving their stock up because it turns out my sinuses are the respiratory equivalent of a bottomless pit of snot.

I was put on an antibiotic, Cefdinir, on Friday. Even though I started it immediately, I kept getting sicker and sicker over the weekend. I ended up taking half a sick day from work Monday I felt so bad. Yesterday morning I called my doc again and he called in a Z-pack for me, so I’m hoping I start improving over the next couple of days. Rich got put on it first thing when he went to the doctor on Monday.

And Coraline, my poor baby, developed such a horrible, painful-sounding cough over the weekend that I took her to the doctor on Monday, a day early, for her already-scheduled ear recheck. It turned out to be the worst office visit with her so far. Not only are both her ears still infected and she almost certainly has allergies, but her lungs sounded rattly enough that her doctor ordered a chest X-ray to rule out pneumonia. I had to help a nurse hold Coraline still while she screamed her lungs out as they took X-rays as quickly as possible, with her crying and saying “mama, mama” over and over; it was horrible to see, let alone have to contribute to her misery. Then another nurse had to help me forcibly hold Coraline still so she could get a breathing treatment — she kept trying to knock off the mask. Coraline fought so hard and cried so much that I almost started crying. We don’t know why, but Coraline is now terrified of the nebulizer, which has made it next to impossible to give her breathing treatments at home. Her doc wants us to give her four treatments a day; we’re lucky to manage three. I think it’d be easier to give a cat an enema than it is to get Coraline to just breathe in that medicated mist.

Coraline got four prescriptions yesterday: a steroid, an antibiotic, a nasal spray, and Singulair. We already had the Xoponex.

The worst part of all of us being sick the last few days is that we’ve missed out on seeing my aunt, uncle, and cousin from New York who are renting a cabin in the mountains nearby; I last saw my aunt and uncle in 2006, while my cousin and I last saw each other when we still lived in Houston (so circa 1985, 1986). I also only got to see my sister, who was in town this weekend, for all of three minutes on Monday when she dropped something off at our house; we didn’t even get to see Elliott and Miranda this time around. So being sick these last several days has really, really sucked. The only upside to me being house-bound has been catching up on season one of Once Upon a Time (only 10 more episodes to go!).

This Z-pack better work its magic but fast. I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired. And I haven’t bought any Kleenex shares yet.