On the Mend (Finally)
Finally beginning to feel better. Just got hit hard with bronchitis, unrelenting coughting, and complete loss of voice. I probably haven’t slept more than nine hours total since Sunday night. It’s pretty difficult to sleep when one is constantly hacking and horking. At least my abdominal and back muscles have had a week of boot camp-like conditioning.
I got in to see the doctor yesterday - their diagnosis leaned towards asthma but no one was quite sure. My spirometry test was very close to my normal range. My breathing has been fine and no asthmatic tightness. My feeling is that it’s more like bronchitis - a super irritation of the bronchial tubes. Whatever it is, it’s clear that cough medicine - even those laced with narcotics - were not working. So, the doctor suggested prednisone. Well, I hate prednisone. I have to be very very sick before I’ll go on it - the side effects are pretty grim: insomina, extreme bitchiness, gastric upset, and in my case, instead of the bitchiness, I get anxiety attacks. I have to say, that I would take panic attacks over bitchiness - less collateral damage with panic attacks. But neither are fun. I almost cried when the doctor said, “prednisone.”
However, it does work and today, I’m feeling better - I even have a voice, albeit an extremely croaky one. We’ll see if tonight, for the first time since in five days, I manage to get more than two-three hours of sleep.
The major bummer from all of this is that Peter and I had to cancel a trip to NYC and Florida. We were scheduled to leave today. I was going to attend the annual conference of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters in NYC. But there is no way I would have been able to fly across the country and then conference for 5 days. ugh. I can barely make it upstairs let alone to NYC.
I was actually going to try to meet up with Frankie whilst in the Big Apple. Oh well. We’ll be there again!
Hello. I am 
Damn your arctic sickness! It would have been fun to meet up!
I took prednisone in college for a really bad ear infection - it gave me tremors. Awful! I hope you don’t have to take it for long.