I started this writing mid-January, and I know that I’ve pretty much bored everyone with the story of My Illness – 2016 – 2017 but I want to put it in the record because it’s been so weird and because I’m somewhat dramatic, or so I’ve been told.

I started feeling bad around Christmas time – slightly before Christmas – but I went to a Christmas Eve celebration at our nephew’s home.  Had fun and good food and didn’t feel too badly.

On Christmas day I felt a little worse, but my daughters helped with putting dinner on the table, and I went to bed and slept well.

Next day, we were invited to a friend’s birthday celebration at his daughter’s home in the Hollywood Hills.

My head felt a little stuffy, but still I didn’t feel too badly.

I seemed to be getting better.

On Thursday after Christmas I went with my daughter and granddaughter to the Americana – a lovely outdoor shopping mall in Glendale.

We were having a late lunch in the Cheesecake factory.  I was pretty hungry (not unusual), but hadn’t really had much to eat  that day – except for half a bag of Fun Yums.  (*Note:  Please save the “She should have known better.”s because obviously I don’t).  I started to eat but very suddenly a wave of nausea swept over me.  I felt weak and dizzy and thought it might have been the Fun Yums. ( Again, *Note:  See above.)

Spoiler Alert:  Let’s just say the Fun Yums didn’t help, and it’s something I’ll never be able to eat or for that matter, look at a bag of, for the rest of my life.  Silver lining.

I came home, went to bed and kept fighting off this nausea, even though I knew I’d feel better if I could only I could puke. “Puke” is a proper way to describe it.  Look it up.

Soon that wish was granted.  I won’t get descriptive.  Suffice it to say it was GLOBAL.  I warned you I could be dramatic.

I was in bed for two days tossing and turning and running to the bathroom every few minutes.

Then that seemed to pass, at last.

A few days later, I felt a cold coming on.  Again.  Then a cough – a wracking, painful, dry cough.  I went to the store myself to get some OTC cough medicine.  It’s probably hard for you to imagine that my family wasn’t fawning and hovering over me, but it’s true; they weren’t.  I was locked away in the tower/bedroom, and I think they forgot about me.  In their defense, they weren’t feeling so great either.

I was still hacking away when I decided to call the nurse practitioner at Kaiser, my healthcare company choice.  The nurse listened to all my symptoms, asked me for my email so that she could send me some relief actions I could take at home and then advised me to go to Urgent Care.

I went to Urgent Care.  A young woman who worked there asked “Are you here for the Urgent Care department?”  It was kind of obvious because I was standing in the check-in line at the Urgent Care Department, but whatever.  They are required to ask – especially of the elderly.  It’s very likely we could be lost.

She said, “I can help you over here” and guided me to the reception desk outside the Urgent Care office.

Again, I was asked for my symptoms.

“Okay, I’ll have a doctor call you on your cellphone.  If you go over there (pointing to the entrance doors) you’ll get better reception.”

I said, “You mean you want me to walk over there and stand and wait for a doctor to call me on my own cellphone?  There isn’t even a place to sit, and isn’t it obvious I don’t feel very well and would rather find a place to lie down than to stand over there and wait for a doctor to call me”?

“Yes,”  was all she said.  She was very monosyllabic.

So, I walked “over there” near the door, glanced inside the nearby pharmacy, where there were chairs and two bars on my phone and sat and waited for the doctor to call me – which he did in a short time.  However, although I could hear him, he couldn’t hear me until I went outside the building on that very windy day.

Again, I was asked for symptoms.

“I think a cough syrup with codeine would work for you.”  Okay.

“Would you like an inhaler”?  No.

“Are you running a fever?”

“I don’t know,” I replied.  “That’s why I came to Urgent Care.”

He chuckled.  “We’re trying to get through more patients this way – with a phone call.”  But I called from home BEFORE.

By now, I’m so befuddled and cold – from standing outside in the wind – that I just want to get my super-duper cough med and go home.

By the next week, I was coughing and WHEEZING.   To me it sounded like a small animal running up and down my throat.  I called Kaiser again and went in for an appointment with my primary care doctor.
This time, I got a breathing treatment, a scrip for Prednisone (which gave me an even greater appetite – a state I thought it impossible to achieve) an inhaler, and an antibiotic just to cover the bases.  So much for natural, holistic medicines.

I stopped wheezing for the most part. I slept better, but I continued to cram my mouth with food about every fifteen minutes.  See above:  Prednisone. One good thing:  My bones didn’t ache, and I guess that would be the Prednisone, too.  I became a Fat Person Without Pain (FPWP).  Something new for the medical books.

By Mid-March I was completely well – even with the eating thing.  So only two-and-a-half months of excessive eating.  As it was, my friend told me I had milked the Prednisone Excuse sufficiently.

I started to exercise a bit – nothing too strenuous.  Nowadays, it’s more about having a good blood-test than my weight.  I’m determined to have good numbers.

And guess what else my doctor told me when I went in to the office to see him about my flu/cold/coughing/wheezing diseases?

Because of my age and certain markers, it seems I’m a prime candidate for a heart attack and/or stroke, or death (He actually used that word.) within the next ten years.  He read it off a chart, so I imagine that statement is read to almost every chubby patient over seventy.  I hate it when they tell you that stuff.  I don’t care if it’s true.  I’m a big believer in the fact that what you hear is what you start to believe.

So, I’m washing all that away with a prayer and some loud cursing.

I’m also going to change doctors.

 

The End