You may recall that Mrs. HM has been fighting the sickovirus. For two weeks, it has dragged on. My explosive, sometimes uncontainable cough had me seeking a diagnosis from Dr. Innernets. Acute Bronchitis, said the symptoms. Thanksgiving is a terrible time to get sick, my friends.
Thursday night, actual Thanksgiving night, we had just returned from our 10-hour sweaving tour of eastern Oklahoma and greater Missouri. It was shortly after 8:00 p.m. I'd unpacked and started a load of laundry. Farmer H was kicked back in the La-Z-Boy. I sat on the short couch talking to him. Because 10 hours, 12 inches away from him in A-Cad, wasn't enough togetherness. Actually, I was tired, and waiting for my laundry to spin, so I could put it in the dryer before descending to my dark basement lair.
We discussed plans to meet Genius the next day, for a Thanksgiving lunch before he started back to Kansas City. He'd been in town with Friend, his roommate, enjoying two Thanksgiving dinners with that family, while we were out of state visiting The Pony.
Out of the blue, I had a coughing fit. It's like when a cat decides it needs to IMMEDIATELY dash into another room. I had no inkling it was coming. Didn't choke on anything. Wasn't speaking. Just a random fit of coughing.
Here's the thing with my current sickovirus. I cough cough cough, and can't get a breath back in. It's terrible! I know what the early pioneers must have felt like, with their whooping cough. Actually, I don't know EXACTLY what they felt like, because I didn't die. But I felt like I might!
Seriously. One minute I was sitting there, listening to Farmer H while he talked and clipped his fingernails onto the plastic lid from a Hot & Sour Soup container that we use as a coaster. (Ever since I caught him putting those clippings into the mantel candle and called him on it, he's had to devise new disposal methods.) The next minute, I was doubled over my knees, cough cough coughing, unable to suck air in!
I thought I might actually die! I could not get any air to come back toward my lungs. Only cough cough cough more and more air out. Every time I'd try to inhale, my lungs made me cough out more. I was flapping my hand at Farmer H. I saw him, out of the corner of my left eye, which was now watering with tears from the forceful cough cough coughing, close up the La-Z-Boy and lean over toward the mantel and reach for something.
It was an emery board! I just KNEW that my Sweet Baboo was going to rescue me from certain imminent death by using that implement to perform a tracheotomy. Farmer H may not understand the word tracheotomy, but he saw The Heat. If Sandy Bullock can do one with a drinking straw, I'm pretty sure Farmer H can do one with an emery board!
I would have breathed a sigh of relief, but I was all out of sighs. All out of air. All of my air was outside me, and none was coming back in! Thank the Gummi Mary, Farmer H had it under control with my emergency tracheotomy.
Except he didn't.
With horror, I side-eyed Farmer H, as the last molecule of carbon dioxide left my lungs, them now sticking together like the spit-moist insides of a deflated balloon...as he sat back in the La-Z-Boy and started FILING HIS FINGERNAILS WITH THE EMERY BOARD!!!
I think the shock of knowing that he had no intention of rescuing me is what allowed a miniscule gasp to suck a couple of oxygen molecules into my lungs. I coughed them right out, but it was a start. After a few other such one breath inward and three coughs out cycles, I was able to sputter at Farmer H.
My face was red. Tears streamed from my eyes. My hands and arms shook, I suppose with near-death adrenaline.
"I was sure you were going to save me, but then I saw you filing your nails!"
"Huh. I wouldn't know how to help you. I figured you'd tell me to get away."
I guess that was going to be his story for the coroner.
7 comments:
It Works!! I am amazed that Blogger finally let me comment!! Despite the fact that I met HeWho while I was an ER nurse and he was an EMT, he would have done the same thing. I think we would have to be unconscious, with no vital signs for them to act.
I haven't had any sicko-virus, but I also get those out of the blue coughing fits and usually they continue on and off (mostly on) for just over an hour as the evening air cools down. I have asthma. To get the cough under control I take several extra hits on my inhaler, through my "spacer". I'm supposed to take two puffs, four times a day when needed. Mostly I don't need it until evening when I take up to six puffs at a time while breathing through the spacer. I know you don't have asthma, but you may now have "viral asthma" which my youngest son had aged two and needed Ventolin for a while. You may also need Ventolin or something similar to get that under control. See your doctor, preferably before you collapse a lung.
In other news, I'm not sure if you received my email re Fruchocs, or if you replied. A reply may have gone to my spam filter which I often empty without looking through it. Let me know if you did receive and reply.
Kathy,
Farmer H and HeWho think alike. But I shudder at the thought of Farmer H being an EMT! He would stop bleeding with duct tape!
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River,
I've never heard of viral asthma. But a long time ago, my regular doctor gave me an inhaler during a visit for a bad cough.
I did not get the email, but I'll look later. I don't check this email much. The one on my other blog is what I mainly deal with. So in the future, try that one. I get occasional emails from joeh and fishducky there, so I know that one works.
I, too, have a cough that sometimes feels like I'm ready to die, but I think it"s caused by oldladyitis!!
fishducky,
OH,NOOOO! Now I have oldladyitis!
Do you still have the inhaler? If not, get a new one and be sure to not the expiry date. Use it as needed to control the cough. Your doctor, the one who gave you an inhaler years ago, knew what he was hearing. Asthma has many forms and can develop at any time. Yours may be temporary as my son's was.
@fishducky; get checked, get that cough checked.
Don't either of you be dying on me just because you didn't bother getting checked.
River,
No, that was many years ago. My Doc has left his practice to go work for the veterans' clinic, because he didn't like the new policies when our hospital was bought by a larger entity. He's a former Army doctor.
I don't plan on dying on you. But I felt like death warmed over, resuscitated, and then sacrificed and left to decompose. Thank the Gummi Mary, I've come out the other side, and feel much better now. Only coughing up the remains of the lung phlegm, no coughing fits.
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