Sniff

ED stands for Emergency Department
ER stands for Emergency Room
DR stands for Physician.
And I needed them all! STAT!

When you get a head cold you know the symptoms. First the sneezing. You are going along in life and BAM "sneeze". You think to yourself "Where did that come from?" And then another "sneeze." Somehow I can never sneeze just one sneeze. Mine always come in twos.

Then you get the dreaded drips. This is when your nose becomes a faucet. You are blowing your nose every 24 seconds. Right when you think all the liquid is out of your nostrils, you feel another drip coming. Soon you are just holding a tissue under your nose knowing that the drips will not stop. But you get tired of holding the tissue so this is when you get creative. You find a tissue corner, twist it just so and shove that twisted section up your nose. And you walk around with the rest of the tissue just hanging from your nose. I think someone should invent the nostril tampon. This would be used during the "drip" portion of the head cold. And it can come in several sizes, thin, normal or super absorbant. All depending on the size of your nose and the severity of the drip.

After the "drips" comes the "clog." You cannot breathe at all through your nose. I figure by this stage you have blown everything out of nose and there is nothing left. Like the dry heaves. This stage is when you actually put drips BACK in your nose by the use of a nose spray. I always, never fails, squirt that nose spray before it is in my nostril and it gets in my eyes. And then there are times when you only have one or two good sprays left and you test it to see if there is anything left in the bottle. That's a waste of a good spray. I have been known, in desperate times, to lean my head back and pray there is SOMETHING, ANYTHING left in the bottle for just one more spray. And the bottle says not to use more than 1 time every 4 hours. Forget that. I am spraying 4 times every hour!! I gotta breathe!

Usually at this point in a head cold you are on the mend. Gotta rough it out for another day or two but soon you will be breathing on your own. You no longer have to sleep on your left side for your left nostril to open up.

But there is a chance your headache may have just been a warning that something even darker was looming in your head. A sinus infection.

Anyone that has experienced a sinus infection knows what I mean when I say, "They are pure evil!" Eveything in your face hurts. And you blow crap out of your nose that God never intended you to see. And that crap actually weighs something. You can feel it fill up your tissue. How gross.

It was at this point where I did the foolish. I ODed on my cold tablets, cough syrup, migraine medication. I couldn't remember what I took, when I took it last or how much I took. So I just retook it all. All I wanted to do was breathe and not have my head pound.

So now add nauseau to the recipe. I couldn't lift my head off the pillow cause I was so dizzy, the wet wash cloth by now which was laying on my forehead was warm. I was surrounded by used tissue which I quickly ran out of and now was using a roll of toilet paper.

I knew I was in deep yogurt and out of my own comfort zone. Pat took me to the ER and I flopped on an examining room and didn't move. My head was pounding, my nose was peeling where it was just too sore to even blow anymore. I hadn't combed my hair in 2 days and my toothbrush hadn't been touched in the same number of days. I just layed there.

My ER doctor was Dr. Perea and he is now my favorite hero. He had a "trainee" PA with him so I was getting double treatment. My ears were plugged too and I couldn't hear a thing. I have no idea what the doctor was asking me. And I didn't care. I just said, "My head hurts. Please make it go away."

After an hour of IV fluids and whatever else was in the IV, I was starting to feel better. Pat had found the tv remote so he was happy clicking the different channels in the room.

Three hours later I was released from the ER. I was a little dizzy yet from the migraine but I was hungry. That's always a good sign.

I have narcotics now for the headache pain, amoxicillin for the sinus infection/bronchitis and on my second roll of toilet paper. I still need to hold a pillow against my chest when I cough, but I'm not coughing as much.

"A summer cold is a different animal." That was the slogan of a cold medication back in the 60's. And how very true it is.