PlazaJen: Passion Knit

So, I've been fighting this sporadic, unpredictable cough now for about three weeks. I swear, it rattled the windows and floorboards & reminded me of my first apartment in Minneapolis, which was under one particular flight pattern that shook our building several times a week. The worst was how it woke me up in the middle of the night, and I'd bury my face in my pillow, coughing - but never getting anything OUT. It's been kind of a personal hell.

Last night was the straw that broke the camel's back. I hadn't been in bed half an hour when I woke myself up, coughing. Then, much later, I woke myself up again - sorry for the graphic nature here - with bile & acid in the back of my throat & in my mouth, gagging, coughing and like you right now, grimacing. So I finally realized that it was not going away, and I was tired, tired from not getting complete nights of sleep, tired from the coughing. Fortunately, my doctor's office usually can get you in pretty quickly, and I popped in mid-morning. I know before, I bitched about the customer service and whatnot, and even started thinking about switching, and I TAKE IT ALL BACK.

My main contact there is a physician's assistant; my primary care physician is this tiny short Vietnamese woman. The last time I was in, she and I had an animated discussion about Vietnamese food. Since the PA was out, I saw my doctor, and I was sitting there knitting on a pair of socks when she entered the room. It set the tone for the entire visit. She went crazy, because she'd just learned how to knit, and proceeded to tell me she'd had a disaster, dropping a stitch, and she panicked and ripped the whole thing out. I proceeded to show her how to fix a dropped stitch, dropping one of my sock stitches & then zipping it right back up. I went further & explained the difference between picking up a dropped purl vs. knit stitch. After about five minutes of good knit chat, she listened to my lungs, and said that I did have some stuff in them, but it wasn't bad yet, and good thing I didn't wait until it turned into bronchitis. She sent me off with a bag of samples, two antibiotics a day and two cough suppressants a day; those pills are the size of a Civic. I felt like maybe I should have gotten my copay back for the free knitting instruction, but I didn't push it. (After all, the samples saved me a trip to the drugstore.)

I came home and slept for a solid two hours, bookended by chipping ice on the driveway. It's an unseasonable 50+ degrees today & I had to take advantage of the melting temps to get some of that stuff up. I always think I'm going to get so much done if I'm home during the workweek, and it never works out that way. The sleep was a good thing, though. The sunlight poured in and I didn't even care that it was so bright, I just curled up like a dog in a patch of sunshine and slept - finally, without the interruption of coughing. And I'm going to be completely confused for the rest of the week as to what day it is!