Sick

I secretly pride myself in my strong immune system. I exercise, eat well, sleep 7-8 hours every night, get my flu shot, wash my hands, but I am not a germ-a-phobe. I feel like all of these things help me to stay very healthy. When all of my family gets sick I am the one who stays strong.

Unfortunately my luck ran out. This week I have been fighting off the nasty cough. I have been prescribing z-packs (antibiotics) and phenergan with codeine cough syrup to patients left and right. Even though I know that the nasty cough is usually just a virus.

Instead of jumping right to the antibiotics that most people ask for and want, I started with my muccinex, echinacea, airborne, cough drops, hot teas, ibuprofen, sudafed, and allergy meds *just in case*. I thought treating my symptoms would help me function. And function I did.

Until last night when this cough kicked my butt. After 4 days of the nasty cough I called my FNP (family nurse practitioner) and had her listen to my lungs to make sure they weren't full of junk- because I sure was coughing up a bunch of it. She gave me a z-pack and cough syrup which I eagerly dropped off in hopeful anticipation of the cessation of my nasty cough.

I was afraid the cough syrup would put me right to bed, so I spent a little while with my family and then I figured 9 was a good bedtime so I guzzled my cough syrup and laid down in bed. I woke up from a deep sleep at 10. I started coughing. Coughing so hard that my husband grabbed the humidifier and turned that on. Right after that I quickly remembered the fastest way to get my husband to run from a room is to start hacking up phlegm. I sat on the side of my bed, dry heaving, coughing up crud, trying to breathe and after an hour it finally subsided.

I do feel much better today after lying around all day long, but seriously. Why isn't there a vaccine against the cough? I mean seriously, I know there are a ton of strains, but we make a flu vaccine and there are a ton of strains of the flu.

I guess I will chalk this up and "I paid my dues" and hopefully avoid another year of sickness. I will say that I am thankful I am not pregnant because I would try to not be taking any of these meds if I was.

So how many of you are or have been sick so far this year? How do you survive? What do you do to help get better? What do you do with your kids?