Double-Tap!

Well, the fourth kid is coughing now (although nobody's gotten anywhere near as sick as me, fortunately).  One child has been coughing for a couple of weeks, but she's still running around mostly.  This cold seems to have a 'double tap' approach (see "Zombieland" sometime lol).  My mother just told me today she's had one cold right after the other one, and that's what's happened to everyone at our house.  But I could only talk to her on the phone for two minutes this morning.

When I decided to write about what it's like to be me when I'm sick, I didn't realize that I was apparently asking the universe to serve up the entire 7-course meal.  I think they get it now--tomorrow can I write about how quickly I recuperate?

I've spent the whole day feeling like I'm sucking air through a tiny little straw.  My voice is gone, and so is my ability to do most things for myself--an icky combination.  The dog won't even get out of my way because I'm not scary enough.  Every half-hour or so I have a terrible coughing, gasping attack that ends with me running to the bathroom.  I had a low point tonight where someone was in our one bathroom and I had to run out the front door to be sick.

I've scared the twins several times today.  They've both come up to me tonight and asked if I'm going to be all right, and all I can say is 'eventually'.  If I have enough breath to get out that long of a word.  The older two are more accustomed to this.

I have taken an enormous amount of prednisone, which is all I can do.  And sudafed and antibiotics.  No way I could take myself and four kids to the ER, nobody to babysit most of the time, not enough insurance (or cash), no family doctor.  It's incredibly frustrating to think that I should probably be an inpatient right now, and that I don't qualify for any kind of disability or Medicaid. 

Did I mention I buy prednisone from the Philippines?  Maybe I'll write more about that later.  For now I'll just say, if you consider that route, do your research on those companies first.  I did, and it's been a godsend.  (If you think this week sounds bad, you should have seen me in years gone by with no pills, or doctors who didn't want to prescribe anything but cough syrup.)  And I've been taking these pills for years--I wouldn't try to treat some other condition all by myself without a thorough understanding of what's the matter with me.

And I haven't even gotten started on how Medicaid hasn't let our children see our family doctor in quite a while--even this week, I've been emailing back and forth with them, trying to get it straightened out.  There's a whole other blog post.  One which almost would've included profanity this week.  If any of my kids gets sick like me, your tax dollars will be paying for them to go to the ER instead of our regular doctor.

Anyway, all I can do now is wait this out....

The girls made Christmas cookies today.  They'll make great mothers someday--they're getting practice now.  It's been difficult today to keep my spirits up today.  We're lucky all the family Christmasses (sp?) are next weekend.  At least I hope I'll be reasonable well by then.

I'm going to bed now.  If I can get a decent night's sleep, I think that'll do me a lot of good.  I can barely see the floor in front of my feet tonight.  Hope this post makes sense.

'night.