As stated multiple times I was a sickly child, from digestive issues to strep throat, and since my teenage years; bronchitis. I mean I had always had a nasty hacking cough, a cough that resembled an 80-year old chain smoker, a cough that rattled my body and annoyed the crap out of my friends and family. I remember when I was little, probably around seven or eight, a friend had dubbed my cough the "Beethoven cough" because it sounded like the saint Bernard barking from the movie.
Regardless, I had a decent set of lungs. I could yell rather loudly, a skill useful for my short stint in sea cadets and for my previous job yelling food orders out as a fry cook. I could play tenor sax and love to sing, although my vocal skill set is limited to Rockband at an easy level. But my lungs are great, powerful, and my doctor had never even suggested asthma as a kid. My pipes were beautiful and healthy.
At fifteen I had a cold and cough, and although the cold went away my cough lingered on. It became so bad friends and teachers would make comments, I had to get notes to go to classes because it sounded like I was hacking up a lung. I developed a weird metallic taste with my coughs that I now associate as the taste of "shit, I need to go to a clinic" and the taste of antibiotics to come. After a couple months of the cough, which got worse and worse and became more painful, I finally sucked up the courage to go to the doctor's, one of my least favourite places despite spending a lot of time there. I went to a walk in clinic near the local mall, the walk in clinic I would then go to multiple times in the next 5 years for bronchitis and the flu. I was told I had bronchitis and that I was fighting the infection well enough on my own that antibiotics wouldn't help. They shoved a puffer at me to take when the coughing fits struck. The puffer tasted funny and I hated using it, but it did help. Oh well, I managed.
I got bronchitis a few times here and there, usually catching it early enough to get the puffer to treat it before antibiotics. I think I went on antibiotics once before the last time and had no trouble. Usually I would catch a cold and the cough would linger and turn to bronchitis. Whatever, it was manageable.
Then I caught the flu. Which sucked. Ask any college student how stressful midterms are. Especially midterms in the last semester of college. It sucks and is stressful enough. Now through the flu in there along with an extremely difficult class known as Biochemistry. I felt like crap and could barely function. I went to my favourite walk in clinic hoping for a doctor's note. Instead I got a giant-ass cotton swab shoved up my nose, which hurts a lot. I pulled it out against the doctor's orders because I am a bullheaded individual who hates having things shoved into my orifices. Needless to say my nose bled a little bit, nothing major. The doctor told me because I had pulled the q-tip out of my nose I wouldn't get positive results for the flu even if I actually had it. He wouldn't give me a damn doctor's note either, meaning I had to go to school with the flu.
*As a side note I used a bunch of those little bottles of hand sanitizer and forewarned all my teachers I was sick in hopes to not spread the germs around I didn't get any of my classmates sick either.
Regardless I wrote my midterms and did well on them. The flu symptoms went away a week later, but the cough still lingered. I was a little annoyed and lived off of cough drops. I got a phone call a couple weeks later from the Department of Infectious Health, which is a scary sounding department. I had donated blood a couple months before and thought something had turned up in my blood. Nope, it was Public Health calling because I had tested positive for the flu and they wanted to ask some follow up questions. The clinic had never called my back about having the flu, but Public Health had. The nurse on the phone was nice, suggested I stop boycotting flu shots and get one for next year (I support vaccines, I just hate needles and avoid them at all costs). She said my cough would linger for up to three weeks after the flu symptoms stopped. I didn't worry about the cough anymore.
The cough got progressively worse, and out of the blue the metallic taste had come back. Hello bronchitis. I went to the walk in clinic and spent four hours coughing my lungs out only to be told what I already knew; bronchitis. The nurses and doctor asked again and again if I smoked, not believing my answer of not ever touching a cigarette. Which was the truth. Oh well. They gave me a prescription for Azithromycin and told me to take it with food, and if my stomach gets upset to have yogurt.
Well as you know colitis sucks and I have tummy issues in general. Added a strong antibiotic at a high dose only exacerbated the problems. To put it bluntly, I could not hold any food in my stomach for long periods of time, needed to use the bathroom every ten minutes, and went through multiple rolls of toilet paper a day. Thus began the five days of hell. I had to go to class, it was the two weeks before exams and crunch time. We were still learning new material and I still had labs. Despite feeling like a Taco Bell victim I still had to attend class and make attempts to eat, although within the hour the food I ate would be completely gone from my system. Oh well.
After those five days ended I still had the cough. It lingered for another week or so but finally left my system. However I am a little worried now. Last week I caught a summer cold, no biggie. But the cough still hasn't gone away. No metallic taste yet, just going through a pack of cough drops a day.
So as a warning to anyone who thinks of smoking, or smoking in the house/car with their children, please don't. My mom and her roommates/boyfriends smoked in the house from the time I was 13 until I moved out at 17. I got bronchitis for the first time at 15 and now get it at least once a year. Who knows if the secondhand smoke caused it or the shitty mold in the townhouses I lived in for a stint caused it. Who knows if I had a predisposition to bronchitis, or if my immune system sucks. Who really knows? But please, don't smoke in the house with children, don't even risk having your kids more susceptible to bronchitis. The coughing fits hurt, they make your throat sore. The taste of your coughs is nasty. The sound is loud and scary. The antibiotics make you sick. And most of all, chronic bronchitis is a form of COPD, and that's a future you want to avoid.
No comments:
Post a Comment