Solonor's Inkwell

Not to be too graphic, but I’ll be glad when the highlight of my day is not celebrating the final expulsion of a hairball that I’ve spent 15 minutes trying to cough up…

(My alternate title was “Kiss me! I’m contagious!”)

Yes, I finally got sick and tired of being sick and tired and went to the doctor for this cough. After he examined my four humors, he prescribed a good dose of leeches and sent me off.

So, now I’m a little poorer and no better, but at least I know that I might have acute bronchitis and 5 days worth of antibiotics to take, and that am contributing to the overuse of such drugs (see, The Merck Manuals) and that I probably would have been fine if I had let it go another week.

It is true that, as the title suggests, I have been pretty successful at avoiding all contact with the medical profession. I have only seen a doctor three times in my adult life. Once was 12 years ago when I got a nasty ear infection. I went to an ENT specialist who apparently had a reputation for screwing things up, because I wound up going to another doctor to get a cure for his cure. The other time was 25 or so years ago when I burned my hand working at McDonald’s and had to go to the emergency room.

Tune in next week to see if I’m over this hacking or if I really do have the black plague.

I got calls from all over the place yesterday wondering if we were flattened from the tornadoes. We’re fine. Woke up to some nasty thunderstorm, but they flew by us pretty quickly. Unfortunately, other folks were not quite so lucky.

For reference, here’s a map with the damage areas I got from Newsday. I put our location on it.