So it turned out I did come down with a case of The Cough, and I still have it. It is slowly driving me insane.
Things came to a head late last night when I gave up trying to suppress my own freaking coughs while I attempted to sleep. Sometime around midnight, I went rooting around our medicine box looking for any spare pills of anything that might hold a shred of a promise of relief for me. Certain cough suppressants are controlled substances in this country, which means that unlike most other medicines (even stuff like antibiotics), you must have a prescription to purchase them - and then insurance doesn't cover it. I knew I wouldn't be able to go to the health clinic to get a prescription until the next morning.
I dug up two pills of generic brand NyQuil and noted happily that the ingredients included a cough suppressant. Unfortunately, I often choke on pills even as small as normal ibuprofen tablets, so I knew there was no way I was going to get the NyQuil softgels down.
So if you walked into my kitchen a little past midnight last night, you would have found me using a sharp knife to hack maniacally at a NyQuil softgel, trying to get at the sweet, suppressanty goodness inside. The end result was this:
Thankfully, I fell into a restless sleep soon after.
HOWEVER. A few hours later, I was woken up by the chirping of the smoke alarm in our hallway (did I mention I was sleeping on the couch at this point, to avoid disturbing Jeremy with my coughing? Well, I was). Our smoke alarms don't run out of batteries without putting up a fight - they chirp loudly every minute or so to let us know what's happening. Why the smoke alarm decided to run out of batteries last night, of all nights, and at that particular hour of night, of all particular hours, I have no idea. But it almost put me over the edge.
I was disoriented by the effects of the NyQuil but I dragged a stool over to the smoke alarm and tried to disconnect the battery. I was terrified that I would accidentally press the test button and set off the alarm. That didn't happen. I successfully removed the battery, but then the smoke alarm started chirping faster than before, in a continuous beeping pattern. So I re-connected the battery and resorted to desperate measures, namely, waking up Jeremy.
He took care of it, I went back to "sleep" (= that horrible NyQuil-induced haze) and woke up a couple of hours later, ready (or not) for a full day's work.
BLAH. Let's hope tonight is better. I went to the health clinic as soon as I got a break and the doctor prescribed me something called Dextrolag. Sounds promising...?
Things came to a head late last night when I gave up trying to suppress my own freaking coughs while I attempted to sleep. Sometime around midnight, I went rooting around our medicine box looking for any spare pills of anything that might hold a shred of a promise of relief for me. Certain cough suppressants are controlled substances in this country, which means that unlike most other medicines (even stuff like antibiotics), you must have a prescription to purchase them - and then insurance doesn't cover it. I knew I wouldn't be able to go to the health clinic to get a prescription until the next morning.
I dug up two pills of generic brand NyQuil and noted happily that the ingredients included a cough suppressant. Unfortunately, I often choke on pills even as small as normal ibuprofen tablets, so I knew there was no way I was going to get the NyQuil softgels down.
So if you walked into my kitchen a little past midnight last night, you would have found me using a sharp knife to hack maniacally at a NyQuil softgel, trying to get at the sweet, suppressanty goodness inside. The end result was this:
Thankfully, I fell into a restless sleep soon after.
HOWEVER. A few hours later, I was woken up by the chirping of the smoke alarm in our hallway (did I mention I was sleeping on the couch at this point, to avoid disturbing Jeremy with my coughing? Well, I was). Our smoke alarms don't run out of batteries without putting up a fight - they chirp loudly every minute or so to let us know what's happening. Why the smoke alarm decided to run out of batteries last night, of all nights, and at that particular hour of night, of all particular hours, I have no idea. But it almost put me over the edge.
I was disoriented by the effects of the NyQuil but I dragged a stool over to the smoke alarm and tried to disconnect the battery. I was terrified that I would accidentally press the test button and set off the alarm. That didn't happen. I successfully removed the battery, but then the smoke alarm started chirping faster than before, in a continuous beeping pattern. So I re-connected the battery and resorted to desperate measures, namely, waking up Jeremy.
He took care of it, I went back to "sleep" (= that horrible NyQuil-induced haze) and woke up a couple of hours later, ready (or not) for a full day's work.
BLAH. Let's hope tonight is better. I went to the health clinic as soon as I got a break and the doctor prescribed me something called Dextrolag. Sounds promising...?