Bill Dog's Journal: lingering sickness

I got sick about 6 weeks ago. Just a really minor cold. Prolly not the porcine pox as I had a doctor's appt. anyways scheduled from weeks earlier, to see me about how an anti-acid production prescription was doin' me fer. (In my old age my stomach had started producing more acid than it needed, and OTC remedies like Ranitadine or whatever stopped doing the job for me after about 2-3 years. But that's another story.) He checked me out and my symptoms and declared it just a cold. Whenever I get sick it always starts the same way (whether a flu or "just a cold") -- a warm scratchy feeling in my throat, and then half a day later the traditional symptoms. But this time it was very mild, barely perceptible body aching and only light headaches, and a few sneezes here and there. Maybe too mild.

These bugs can get tricky. I had heard about the Spanish flu and how typically only the strongest and healthiest keeled over due to it, because it basically tricked the body into over-reacting in fighting it, and so whichever bodies could mount the strongest sudden defense, were the ones that killed themselves. So how about a bug that is similar in some sense, but the opposite?

So after about a week I was feeling better, and thought I had gotten off easy this time. I was feeling great, actually, and was all ready to start exercising again, except I had some kind of reoccurence. Just as mild in symptoms as before, but this lasted I guess a little less than a week. Then the beginning of the next week I got in a car wreck, and was stressed from that (like what the heck I was going to do, and in dealing with professional screwers-over at the Auto Club's insurance dept.), so overall felt headachy and lousy. And then the week began with my picking up my folks at the airport, and they must've caught something on the plane because a couple days later they had (minor) colds and I was back with relapse #2. So the auto accident settlement is almost completely resolved (unsatisfactorily, but hey, life sucks), so my agitation and stress levels are back down, but once in a while I'm still having a day where I wake up and have that feeling in my throat and feel mildly achy and headachy that day, as if the bug that hit me weeks ago has managed to stay under the radar and remained with me.

From family friends I've heard reports of other people experiencing this, an unusually mild bug, that seems to come back at times, shortly after you think you're over it.

Oh well, at least it cured my persistent cough. I got sick for Christmas a couple weeks after starting a new job in Dec. of 07. Normally if I have a full-blown cold, it starts of course with the throat feeling (altho I never get a "sore throat" -- haven't had one of those since childhood), and almost always ends with lung congestion, that I'm coughing up for a while afterwards. I figure that's about how I will die, when I go*. So I'm at work and get the frequent tickle in the throat you can't ignore, and go outside and cough my head off. Then they moved us into our new building, which was some converted warehouse that was dusty as heck, and maybe they didn't bother with filters for the ventilation system as it spewed all kinds of dust and particles of who-knows-what at us. One of our doc ladies was grossed out because her cube was right under one of the vents and a lot of mornings she'd come in and in addition to all the unrecognizable particles there'd also be little dead gnats and other bugs on her desk. I got some of them too, that blew my way. So I basically coughed my head off that whole year, and only started graduating towards an occasional cough this year. They must've thought I had TB or something. Really embarassing in weekly dev mtgs and that unsupressable tickle comes. That takes several minutes of hacking to get to finally subside. So at least I'm pretty much over that.

*I figure the way I'll be meeting my maker is basically from drowning in my own lung gunk. Several years ago I was sick and woke up in the middle of the night one night not really being able to breathe, as I had about an entire mouthful of gunk in my lungs that I got up and horked up while running to the sink and spit out. It alarmed me of course, but I was still kinda half asleep, and thought it was so surreal that maybe it was a dream, and I was tired and in my irrational half-awake stupor I laid down and went back to sleep. But in about another couple of hours I was awakened again with the same thing and this time I stayed up(-right!) the rest of the night, freaked out, and saw any doctor I could the next day. It didn't happen the next night, but I'm very susceptible to building up lots of fun stuff in my lungs, and I think I can feel my capillaries or little sponge pores or whatever all closing tight when in the summer time with windows open even a wisk of cigarette smoke from the neighbor's yard enters my home, so I think my lungs are my strategic weak flank. Don't tell the bugs.

Says my boss

[Short Circuit]

Says my boss of my coworker who claims "he never gets sick", "Once he gets sick, he'll be coughing through the whole winter."

Me, I finally got mine after about two years spotless health. Stuck in bed from Saturday morning through Tuesday. First with fever, then with cold and nasty cough. Bleh.

Re:

[Bill Dog]

My sis and her hubby came back from Las Vegas a few weeks ago with the piggy disease*. We avoided them like the porky plague, and didn't catch it. But, from what I've heard from her and others, the fever can really elevate, esp. at night, so if you're not already over a fever phase, definitely have a thermometer handy, and someone to drive you to the ER if it goes above 103. She got some drugs that actually helped (and the test results a few days later that confirmed her bacon status). Good to know there ar

stuff

[zogger]

CoQ10, oil of oregano, vitamin d (sunshine on skin daily), Allicin C, grapeseed extract

Re:

[Bill Dog]

, eye of newt, ... ;)

I personally don't generally believe in home remedies and herbal supplements or other things of homeopathicological dubiousness. I take a Centrum and a calcium pill, and that's it. (And I harbor no delusions of absorption or effectiveness levels anything like what's printed on the bottles.) My sis takes fish oil pills and powdered protein and God-knows-what-other extracts and chemically-reduced and isolated substances, but I believe we were designed/evolved to draw and process nutrients

Re:

[zogger]

Everything I listed is allopathic, not homeopathic, and nothing voodoo to it, straight biochemistry. And you are missing out if you think you can get all your nutrients directly from supermarket food. If you are a hunter / gatherer eating all wild foods, yes, possible, otherwise..I don't think so.

And here's why, take it for what it is worth. The soils on most farms today are depleted drastically and they only add in certain basic chemicals-fertilizers- commonly referred to as N(itrogen)P(hosphorus)K

Re:

[Bill Dog]

Well I *will* believe what I want, as in a way we all do, but I hope you're not putting words in my mouth or otherwise assuming that I'm assuming that you're "a dumbass farmer", just because my reaction is that of skepticism. I'm not skeptical because of what you do for a living or where you live. (Altho the notion of a combined redneck and hippie -- two characters who typically couldn't hate each other more -- is intriguing! :) So it must be that lack of letters after your name. I'm only programmed to unqu

Persistent Cough

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Finally got diagnosed as asthma for me, and when I start having the blackouts (when I cough so hard I completely empty my lungs, until the world goes dark for a few seconds and my autonomous nervous system takes over to bring me back) the emergency inhaler really helps.

I would have thought I had Porky Pig come to visit this fall, but it never developed the fever, so I just ignored it and kept working, aside from a couple of days when the migraines got to bad also.

Re:

[Bill Dog]

Maybe you already have a maintenance inhaler in addition to an emergency one, if your migraines are asthma-related. My sis had those plus other symptoms (but not a cough) due to oxygen deficiency, and uses both kinds of inhalers. And they've been working well for her.

I might've gotten some of that respiratory weakness in my genes, as I've come close to blacking out from coughing too hard and for too long, and from actually laughing (constrictively) for too long. Sucks cuz as a kid I could go without really

Re:

[Marxist Hacker 42]

My migraines aren't asthma related. The migraines came YEARS before the asthma.

But yes, the blacking out really sucks- especially if the cough comes at 65 on the freeway...

That sucks

[dedazo]

My sister's kids had some respiratory problems a few years back, which the doctors treated with this thing called a "nebulizer" (I think). Apparently it's some sort of miraculous device because it solved all their problems and she can't stop talking about how great it is.

Not sure if that would help you. By her descriptions I gather it's just a high-tech version of the breathe-VicksVapoRub-in-hot-water thing my parents used to afflict us with when we were kids, but there's some sort of actual medication invo

Re:

[Bill Dog]

"nebulizer" [...] version of the breathe-VicksVapoRub-in-hot-water thing my parents used to afflict us with when we were kids

Ah, like the vaporizers my parents used to run in our rooms when we were sick as kids -- filled with liquid (water in my younger days case, and I guess asthma medicine in the today's nebulizer case), and then it converts the liquid into a fine mist to be breathed in. I'm not sure what that was supposed to do for us. But I guess I survived it.

Hope you get better.

Thanks, and good to hea