turn your head and cough

This has not been the best couple of weeks of my life.  There were highlights, like the soccer game I got to go to the other evening (6 year olds chasing a ball around a field).  But mostly it's been a period of time when my body has totally failed me.

Two weeks ago today it began.  The cough.  I missed two days of work about a week into the cough, but I figured it would eventually wear itself down.  I got some old cough medicine and started taking it. Which led to...

The zombie effect.  When I took the cough syrup, I wasn't able to hold my head up.  I cut the dose in half, and could hold my head up, but I said and did weird things.  I know I did by the looks I got from co-workers.  Sometimes it was more than looks.  It was laughter.  At me.  The other side effect of the cough syrup was that it gave me amnesia.  So I have lost a significant part of my memory of the past two weeks.

There were days I refused to use medication.  That led to...the Depends effect.  For those of you not living in the United States, Depends are incontinence underwear.  For people who pee their pants.  Which is what I did when I didn't take the cough syrup that caused the zombie effect. 

Total humiliation no matter what I did.  The culmination of the cough, was that I pissed and coughed my way out of the building at work Friday evening.  My body was giving me hell on both ends.  I thought I had suffered the worst.  

Until today.  I was stepping out on the front porch for a moment to look in the flower bed I still haven't planted, except for the few Hostas that my BFF gave me.  Those damn Labs have dug them up at least 4 times.  Sure enough, there were holes in the flower bed and I spotted them as I stepped out.  That stopped mattering as soon as my right foot touched the warmth of the concrete beneath it.

I got shot in the right calf.  At least, it felt like I did.  Then I realized I had just developed the charlie horse from hell.  I screamed and cussed, Stevie Wonder (sitting inside on the couch breaking beans) asked if I needed help and I screamed at him to JUST LET ME SCREAM UNTIL I GET PAST THIS MOMENT.  I thought I was going to die.

(I have a high pain tolerance.  I'm the person who refused pain medication in the Recovery Room after my gall bladder surgery because I DON'T LIKE DRUGS.  I hate feeling doped up and out of control.  So you see why this has been hard on me?)

Until the charlie horse from hell.  Steve offered to get me a muscle relaxer.  After 30 minutes I decided YES I NEEDED IT.  He brought it to me.  A bottle of muscle relaxers I had refused to use when I had a pinched nerve in my neck a while back.  I gulped one down.

And passed out.  COLD.  For at least 4 hours.  And woke up feeling woozy, and with my leg still hurting.

I spent the rest of today learning to walk with the charlie horse from hell in my leg.  It is best when I walk on my toes on my right leg.  But that throws my gait off because I still have drugs in me, and so I am lurching drunkenly all over the house like Chester on Gun Smoke.

And Steve is starting to look more like Marshal Dillon.  

If I start coughing and take more cough syrup, he may start looking like Miss Kitty.

I don't think this is going to be my best weekend.

but life is still good ~cath
Twitter @jonesbabie