Tired of Being Sick. And Sick of Being Tired.

For years I have been promising myself a winter vacation to someplace sunny and warm and preferably tropical to get a break from the cold and snow and ice that is winter in Ohio.  But years have passed and I have never taken this tropical vacation.  And then sometime around mid-April I do a mental head slap and think, Heyyyy, I missed it. Again!

So last month Vince and I had an unexpected opportunity to fly to North Carolina to attend the wedding of one of my best friends.  And, yeah, okay, it’d be a stretch to call North Carolina “tropical” – but it does qualify as somewhere warm.

We had a wonderful time, but I confess that I have been officially cured of my desire to travel during the winter months.

Why?  Because I have been sick on and off since we returned.  Mostly “on.”  And I am most definitely sick and tired of being sick. And tired.

When we were on the plane, I heard so many people coughing and hacking and sneezing and I just knew those cooties were headed in my direction with the sole intent of infiltrating my sinuses.  I tried to stave it off by downing mass quantities of zinc and Vitamin C and Airborne tablets.  I tried not touching my nose or eyes or mouth before, during and after the flight. And I tried scrubbing my hands until they were all scaly and cracked and in desperate need of an intense moisturizer.   

Did any of that help? Of course not. I still caught the stinkin’ cold.

I was off work and in bed for two days. I missed bowling that Sunday evening because one little trip to Costco earlier in the day did me in and I needed to go home and rest.

And when I showed up at bowling the following Sunday, my teammates still thought I was sick.  They refused to slap me high fives lest they come in contact with my cooties.  And this was still in January, mind you.

Finally, around the first of February, I started to feel better. 

But then a few days later I started getting that sore throat, swollen glands feeling you get before you catch a cold.

Again?  Really??

So once again, I started downing Cold-Eze tablets.  And, interestingly, the symptoms never truly developed into a full-blown cold. 

But a week later, I stated coughing in earnest. Again. I was blowing my nose and going through our winter quota of Kleenex. Again.  So I finally gave in and went to the doctor. 

Now I’m not one of those people who run to the doctor for every little sniffle. I know that antibiotics don’t work on the common cold. And I don’t like forking over my $25 co-pay for someone to tell me I need to get lots of rest and drink plenty of fluids.

Yet I was sick and tired of waking up at 3AM with coughing fits that disturbed not only me, but my husband, both cats and probably a neighbor or two. So I finally gave in and trotted myself over to the physician’s office. 

I was prescribed a wonderful cough medicine with codeine that allows me to sleep almost all through the night.  And I was given an antibiotic for the sinus infection. 

However, because I’d had a prior sinus infection in November, the doctor didn’t want to prescribe the same antibiotic that I’d taken a mere three months prior.

So I took the new pill and headed off to work.

After a little while I started feeling really bad – lethargic and jittery at the same time. I was nauseous.  And I couldn’t think clearly.

Finally, it occurred to me in my foggy state that I was having a reaction to the antibiotic. 

So I called the doctor’s office. And they told me not to take any more of that medication. They said I was having a reaction to the antibiotic. And they said they’d prescribe something else for me.

Well, no duh. I told them I was having a reaction.  And like I would even consider taking a second pill when the first one was doing such a number on me.

Fortunately, the new antibiotics seem to be working just fine.  I’m starting to feel better. And I am not keeping the entire neighborhood up all night from the sound of my coughing. 

I even made it to bowling last night, although my teammates would only go as far as a celebratory “elbow bump” rather than a high five.  And I can’t be sure, but I thought I detected the faint scent of Lysol disinfectant and their antibacterial hand gel every time I returned to my seat.

Ah well. I can’t say as I blame ‘em.

I’m just hoping that I’m finished with the whole germ thing for the year.  I’m tired of being sick. And sick of being tired. 

And I really want to be high-fived when I bowl a strike. There just isn’t the same sense of satisfaction from an elbow bump.