Ode to a Grecian Doc

For the last week and a half I have been suffering from some sort of illness. It is a physical ailment (not mental, although I suppose that is questionable) that consists solely of an obscenely violent cough. No runny nose, no fever, no aches and pains (well, aside from the ones that have occurred from coughing non stop for a week and a half) - nothing that would signal a cold or some other type of sickness. I have been known to have an asthmatic cough now and then, but this seemed to be more than that, especially considering I'm using inhalers. I have deemed the illness the cough from hell, and while I can enjoy some sort of relief during the day, medical reality has proven that sleeping with the cough from is damn near impossible (something about lying down, or something). So every night for the past week and a half I have spent six or seven hours coughing for ten minutes straight every few minutes, only to finally fall asleep from sheer exhaustion at 6am.

Remarkably, this constant cough has only had the power to wake my husband twice. No, my husband can sleep soundly next to me while I cough violently practically in his ear, all the while flailing about like a shark attack victim. His only response is usually to snore louder, and how he can manage a snore to override my high decibel cough is beyond me. I suppose my constant suffering bores him, or he just doesn't appreciate not being the loudest person in the apartment.
It is comforting to know that I could be thrashing about, only to fall dead, and have him realize it by finding my already decaying corpse when he wakes up. Still, for all the lack of control I've had over the cough, I am quite glad it hasn't disturbed him, since he like, works for a living and all.

But last night was the worst. My husband decided to prescribe an antibiotic for me since the cough wasn't really improving and it seemed it might be an infection. Now, I have been known to be allergic to every antibiotic given to man. In my childhood, my doctors would just keep giving me antibiotics and I would just end up deathly allergic to every single one (thanks to those that lengthened an already too long hospital stay). We had finally discovered one that I seemed to tolerate, and that is the one my husband gave me. I did not have a lot of coughing overnight, but around 4am I noticed that I was having some difficulty breathing. Everytime I fell asleep, I would awaken abruptly after a few minutes in some sort of weird respiratory distress. I had experienced similar things due to the asthma, so I figured that was it. When my husband woke up he checked me for other signs of an allergy and found none, so I took my 7am antibiotic and tried to go back to sleep.

No deal, in fact, the breathing difficulties got much worse around 9am, I fell asleep and awoke abruptly, coughing and choking and really hoping this was not the way I was going to die. I called my husband a bit panicked, and since he couldn't get away from the hospital, he sent his mom over to me. She gave me a shot of cortisone, represcribed ALL my medications (after a bit of an argument with my husband over his choices), sat with me for a bit to make sure I was ok, instructed me to sit up for a bit while my breathing was still in distress and said she'd call to check up on me in an hour. Luckily, my husband was able to come home by then, so she didn't have to feel burdened to come back over (although I know she wouldn't consider it a burden).

I'm still a little shaky over the whole incident, but this afternoon I had a couple of hours of breathe-free, cough-free sleep (well, breathe problem free, that is, I did not suddenly become a zombie). But sometimes I am so grateful to have doctors in the family. Although, come to think of it, if my husband, the doctor, hadn't given me the antibiotic in the first place maybe this wouldn't have happened. Hmm, maybe there is some sort of global doctor conspiracy at play here...