Happy syrup

Am not malingerer -- have been officially diagnosed with brochitis. Even got a chest x-ray to rule out pneumonia so I wouldn't have to take antibiotics. Since I am allergic to all the good ones, they always give me the wussy kinds that you have to take four times a day for eternity, so a chance to avoid them is worth a few roentgens IMHO.

So, I am the proud new owner of a shiny albuterol inhaler and two lovely, marvelous bottles of cough syrup with codeine. With refills!

I should say that I can take a fair amount of codeine and still be amazingly functional. I am prone to sinus infections and more than once have been given this elixir of comfort and joy, and worked and went to class largely unaffected by it. I mean, it suppressed my cough and did not make me unfit for operation of heavy machinery etc. Of course I was working in a candy store, which, sadly, seldom involves use of forklifts, D-9 Cats, road graders, and the like, but still. I could make change and carry on conversations that were not too bizarre (from my end, anyway; the store was downtown and there are some weird folk there to be sure).

Once I was given Vicodin when I had pneumonia a few years back and took it with great trepidation, fearing it would make me all loose and vague and I might like it too much and become a crackhead or something. (Hey, I watch made-for-TV movies sometimes. Okay, I don't, but I did as an impressionable child.) I might as well have eaten a Tic-Tac. I'm a codeine girl, all the way.

Oh, and albuterol inhalers? Eeuw. I don't know how people can deal with it. Inhaling things that are not air is completely against my personal creed. Case in point: I don't smoke, never have. I took a puff off this inhaler and it grossed me out big time. Of course, some practice might help, as I think most of the medicine actually landed on my tongue. So I'll try again. But I don't like it.

Little Delia also went to the doctor with me. We all went. I wanted J. to meet the doctor since she needs one at our HMO. Poor Delia, she realized where we were and commenced to hollering and carrying on. She calmed down a bit and watched what happened to me with interest, in between pointing at things and speaking very seriously about them, in some other language as far as I could tell.

Then we parted company as I went off for my chest films and Delia had her own appointment to deal with that pesky rash. Oh, the humanity. We were in the same general area of the clinic and I had no trouble pinpointing their location when I was done. The piercing, wailing screams of despair led me right to her. She got some fancy paste for the affected area and all will be well after a day or two of rampant nudity and application of said paste.