Friday, March 11, 2005

Every year I get this horrible cough. I don’t know what it is. I have been sick, at least a little, since last Sunday. So I am going on two weeks. It isn’t pretty. Plus, last night, the horrible cough came on.

The horrible cough consists of coughing and hacking and hacking and coughing for what seems to be no reason. I am not congested. I just have an irrepressible urge to cough over and over until I wish someone would smack me in the head and knock me into sweet oblivion. Last night, as I caught up on my missed L Word episodes, I realized that the cough was here in earnest. Nothing stops it. Not Vicks Vaporub, cough syrup, nothing.

Last night I coughed instead of slept. Then I had to come to work. I could barely teach because of the coughing. The students stared at me somewhat sympathetically, but also looking concerned that I may be infecting them with something. One of my students asked me if I was positive that I didn’t have SARS.

So now, I am going to brave the local clinic. I have insurance, but I hate to go anyway. I know I will be in a room with screaming, infected babies and pale elderly people. I will be afraid to touch the magazines or breathe the air. My only hope is that I get some cough syrup with Codeine. Sweet, sweet codeine.
¶ 3:06 PM