What hasn't happened this week?
My chronic night cough worsened. So much so that I threw up from coughing at night. The next morning, I woke up with a head cold. It's like my illness went to my head. There have been days I felt I was on my death bed.
Desperate for help and relieve, I turned to my mother, who steered me to a Chinese herbalist. The herbalist practises traditional Chinese medicine so she is referred to as the doctor. The herb store I went to kept their doctor in a back room. She looked kind enough but spoke only Mandarin and not a word of English. The shop manager translated.
The doctor took my pulse, looked at my tongue, looked me in the eye, then wrote out a script. One of the staff in the herb shop gathered the herbs from the various drawers and jars they had. Apparently, I suffer from too much dampness and too much yin. That is, I am too wet, dark and womanly. Comes from eating too many raw vegetables and drinking too much cold water. I need some hot stuff in me to rebalance my energy. And I likely have an allergy to something.
I don't know about the damp yin stuff, but I have no doubt I am allergic to something. Bro Bro diagnosed the same thing. He pointed at a new blood pressure medication I recently started as the culprit.
But as far as the herbalist is concerned, a rebalancing of my energy wouldn't hurt. So I went home with three packages of herbs to brew, one on each day. I make two cups of "tea" each morning, drink one in the morning, one at night.
Each package contains lots of dried leaves, twigs, almonds, tree bark and other unidentifiable dried vegetation. I add four cups of water, boil the pot down to one cup, then pour the cup of tea to put aside. Then I add three more cups of water to the pot containing the cooked herbs and reduce the water again to one cup. I mix the two cups and drink one, leaving the other for my night dose. I do this for three days.
And I gotta admit. As I brewed the tea, I wished for a cauldron, I wanted to wear a black cape, I wanted to stir, and I wanted to chant. I played out a sinister scene of medicine brewing in my head as I made my potion.
I've stopped taking my suspect blood pressure pill. Bro Bro said, "If you stop the drug, you could suddenly have a stroke." Let's see, stroke...cough my brains out and wet my pants several times a day...stroke...cough my brains out and wet my pants several times a day. It was a hard decision, but I am now a walking time bomb, at risk of having a stroke any minute.
Bro Bro faxed my doctor to suggest a change in medicine. But today I am producing phlegm. This is a different cough. If my cough is an allergic reaction, do I need to see the respirologist next month? And could I be allergic to Prozac? I need to talk to my doctor. At least the secretary was able to squeeze me in for Monday.
Today, being less hacky with my cough, I put my two platys into a bucket so I could clean out their aquarium. I filled the cleaned aquarium with water and started the pump to let the water cycle. Then I went out to dinner. When I got back, I noticed only one platy in the bucket. I looked around for the other one. I saw a dried red fish on the floor. The stupid fish had jumped out. He's always the trouble maker, this feisty one. Couldn't wait till I cycled the tank. I am angry at him, and hurt that he didn't trust me to provide for him. Now he's dead.
And now, I must take my narcotic cough syrup. I need my fix.
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8 comments:
Don't do 2 things at once - stop the blood pressure medicine and take the Chinese herb - if your cough stops, how will you know what helped?
What kind of blood pressure medication is it? Is it an ACE inhibitor? Coughing would be a side effect of that, but a dry cough. Coughing is not a side effect of Prozac. You were coughing before the blood pressure medication.
If your coughing is getting worse, I think your doctor should repeat your chest X-ray and/or CT scan. Push for this OK?
I have a recurring dream about fish jumping out of my fish tank and my finding them as dried up flakes on the ground near the tank. I've been trying to understand these dreams. Hope they're not premonition dreams and in some way predicting illness and death for you.
What have you been doing that's sinful?
Did I omit my sins? Oh, the usual. Pigging out (because I am a pig), not exercising (because I cough, spit germs wherever I go and am short of breath) and spitting venom on people who piss me off (putting curses on them).
Zestril, apparently an ACE inhibitor. It was a dry, hacking cough for a long, long time. Until this week, after I threw up at night and the disease went to my head. The next day, I started to produce phlegm. But I think I have two coughs going on. Sometimes it's dry and hacking, sometimes it's phlegmy.
Dad had an ACE-induced cough. Dad's sister died from a stroke after suddenly stopping her blood pressure meds before a cataract operation. I think my fish dreams are death premonitions.
Reduce your Zestril slowly, keep monitoring your blood pressure. It's a sin to not attend to your health. Like a fish jumping out of water.
Too late. I've stopped for three days. How can I just jump back in? I'm not dead yet. But if I die this afternoon, can you make sure someone feeds my fish?
Hey, you don't even keep fish. If you dream about a borrow tank, maybe the premonitions have nothing to do with your family members. I interpret that you are playing out in your dream what you observe at the hospital, or that it's wishful thinking because you are an evil doctor.
Could it be that you have Asthma? If so, do you use inhalers of any kind? Perhaps you're like me, allergic to midlife as we know it. Good luck with it....
I think you vomitted into your lungs and it's now producing phlegm. Let's hope its temporary.
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