Today is Day 40 of Throat of Death. I’m beginning to forget what my real voice sounds like, since I just sound all demony, but not in a cool Nine Inch Nails way, more like a 70-year-old waitress at a truck stop with a Marlboro dangling from the lipstick outline on her pruney lips kind of way. Forty days and forty nights of a sore throat and various respiratory issues. I feel like I gave up breathing for Lent. My lungs sound like a withered cuckoo clock with a few loose cogs rolling around inside, only instead of some cheery little chirp, every fifteen minutes I cough this death rattle and instead of a little yellow happy bird’ well, you get something else entirely.
So, um’still reading?
I’m the girl who has that uncanny ability to make her readers feel a little ishy.
I made a doctor’s appointment but because today is Wednesday, it meant that Dr. Perky is off doing whatever little Perky things she does. Probably filming Mighty Dog commercials with her champion show dogs. And it meant that I got to see Dr. Hot N’Gentle.
‘Oh great, the guy who has kept me sick for the last five weeks.’ I quipped to the receptionist automoton, but she was a foul creature employed by the HMO and probably paid in vats of coleslaw or some other mayonnaise-based side dish, so she did not have much of a sense of humor. But seriously, I have visited the doctor on three of the last five Wednesdays. I wish I had thought to grab a punch card on my first visit, because I must have a free visit coming up.
When Dr. Hot N’Gentle stopped in and said ‘Weetabix! How are you feeling?’ I couldn’t help myself from saying ‘Well, pretty good, but I figured that since it was Wednesday you might be missing me, so thought I’d stop down.’ And then I demanded something stronger than Zithromax because I am leaving for San Francisco tomorrow and I remembered that last year at this exact same time, I was getting ready to go to Atlanta (and visit the very sexy Rancho Lesbiano, where incidentally Badsnake is ailing with her own illness that will not heal) and Dr. Perky gave me a Zithromax/Prednisone cocktail. And I really couldn’t afford to be wheezing in the City With Hills That Want To Kick My Ass. What is more, I can’t even chuckle without sending myself into a coughing fit that lasts for five minutes, so it simply will not do to be so ill. So bring on the drugs, Doctor Man. Pump my lungs up with your best juice so I can get busy packing and having my traditional pre-travel panic attack.
Dr. Hot N’Gentle listened to my breathing and agreed that my lungs were getting very beaten up by Mysterious Death Illness and he was hoping that we would have been able to catch it in time with the Zithromax, but it was simply not to be. So he chirpily wrote out a scrip for Prednisone and a refill for the Zithromax.
As I was leaving, there was this weird moment when Dr. Hot N’Gentle calls out ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do in San Francisco!’, so I said ‘Oh, ok, I’ll keep that in mind.’
And he replies ‘Well, that leaves you with a lot of choices anyway.’ Implying that there’s not bloody much that he wouldn’t do. And then he blushed. And I blushed. And stumbled blindly for the door. Flirting. There was a definite flirt aura coming from Dr. Hot N’Gentle, which just does not compute in my tender brain. It is physically impossible for me to be in flirt mode with the man whose garbage I heaved into not six weeks earlier. He has seen me throw up and get all weepy-eyed and have a big drool string hanging out of my mouth. He saw me in tea-stained socks and fuschia sweatpants of the 1986 vintage, which by all accounts was not a very good year for sweatpants. And sure, he is pretty hot, but in a Ned Flanders kind of way, so it’s just wrong that he should be the stuff that flirt is made of. Just not right.
Are you there God? It’s me, Weetabix. Is this your way of messing with my head? Or making me feel all strange and awkward around my substitute doctor? Because if it is, way to stick to the agenda! Will I be puking again next time? Or perhaps lose control of myself and let forth with some kind of effluvium from a miscellaneous orifice? What excitement! Maybe if I make with a big poo, he’ll ask me to go steady.
I mumbled, ‘Ok, I’ll’uh, keep that’uh, in mind.’ And then fled.
Literally. Fled.
So, anyway, hopefully I won’t be a sick monster in San Francisco. I did a search on possible side effects of Prednisone and found this:
INTERACTION-Avoid alcohol because both alcohol and corticosteroids can cause stomach irritation. Also avoid foods high in sodium (salt).
After I recovered from my wave of relief that they explained in parenthetical that sodium is indeed SALT, I was distraught, as this means that I cannot partake in a bacon martini.
Well, gentle reader, I must be off for I have much to do, dinner to make, a trance to go into during which I fret about how not packed I am, and plans, plans, plans. Hopefully I shall be able to make Weetabix: Season on the Road updates but if not, have a wonderful several days and I will talk to you next week.
