Follow-up Exams

The accusation has been leveled at me, on occasion, that I have a habit of leaving dangling loose ends a-plenty here at the blog. This, as I’ve explained (although possibly only in comments-upon-comments so you may be reading this for the first time), is because I tend to write about what’s on my mind, and despite my penchant for overthinking generally the things on my mind tend to be openly unresolved things. When I mention a problem or a bad situation, there’s a possibility that it will never change, which means it ultimately becomes part of the boring background noise and I cease to find it remotely appealing for bloggery (though oddly enough, some things, like the traffic on I-66, never quite become completely unmentionable in this regard.) There’s also a possibility that the problem will resolve in a positive, everything-back-to-normal kind of way, and while that certainly is a good thing from my perspective, again, it’s not inherently interesting and thus tends neither to occupy much mental space once it happens nor to demand expression in daily post form. When things either end up in a metaphorically fiery wreck far worse than the initial problem, or get solved in a particularly amazing way, that’s when the odds of me providing blog-closure are the highest. That’s just the way it goes.

But never let it be said that I allow myself to be unceasingly ruled by the hobgoblins of consistency. (Hobgoblined? Hobgobbled?) So here’s some loosely-related updates:

The little guy made a full recovery from whatever ancient, hideous plague he managed to contract between Sunday night and Monday morning. Monday is usually a day off from daycare for him anyway, as well as a day off from work for my wife, so she was able to stay home and keep an eye on him but he pretty much seemed to have slept it off once he started in on a new day’s worth of meals. By the time I got home from work and dinner plans were afoot, the little guy was his usual sassy, bossy self and ate a fair amount of “tacos” for dinner. (The scare-quotes recipe entails putting some olives, peppers, cheese and beans on a plate next to some tortillas and letting him decide which elements to combine and/or eat a la carte.) He had a hard time settling himself down to sleep last night but that seemed due less to illness and more to just being a two-year-old who got it into his head that bedtime needed to be pushed back about an hour in favor of additional wild rumpus time. At any rate, he’s back at daycare today, and the only potential consequence left to contend with is the fact that my wife felt severely under the weather this morning, possibly having picked up the little guy’s bug, possibly due to some unrelated factor. We never really know, do we?

Speaking of never really knowing, and going way back into the archives, I continue to be unable to completely throw off the lung-shackles of my persistent cough, BUT I did manage to drag myself to the doctor, who told me it was almost certainly seasonal allergies. On the one hand I made it abundantly clear that I have been dealing with environmental allergies pretty much my whole life and yet have never encountered anything remotely like not being able to stop coughing for two months straight. On the other hand the doctor (technically the PA, but I don’t get huffy about stuff like that) explained to me that (a) people’s allergies can change over time and (b) this summer of 2010 has been one of the worst on record, at least from his office’s experience, for people complaining of allergy symptoms, not to mention that (c) I didn’t have any other symptoms, including ones I might have noticed like fever or pain and ones he might have noticed listening to my lungs with a stethoscope, which pretty much ruled out any bacterial or viral marauders. So. Allergies. I was a little bummed that I wasn’t going to be prescribed an antibiotic that would magically fix me but I was hopeful that the prescription-strength allergy meds I was allowed access to might have their own charms.


I went to an allergist about twelve years ago but didn’t find it terribly helpful (the nasal spray I was given back then dried me out so bad it made my nose bleed) and I told the PA as much and he assured me that allergy medicines keep getting better all the time and I should give them another chance. So I ended up with one of those lavender hockey puck inhalers and some nasal spray and some vicodin-laced cough syrup to help me sleep if I needed it (which came with a free lecture about not letting myself get addicted to it and also locking it up if I have any big parties, to all of which – wow. I haven’t even broken the seal on that bottle as a result) and a suggestion to get some max-strength OTC antihistamines and instructions to take all of the above (except the cough syrup) daily.

Which I’ve been doing pretty faithfully, and it’s been three weeks and … meh? I seem to be coughing less, but it’s still fairly noticeable to me. It’s also still more noticeable at work, but at this point who knows how much of that is all in my head. Supposedly things are going to get better once we have one good hard freeze, which can’t be much more than another couple months away. But it all makes me wonder if, now that this has happened once, I am going to have to deal with this every single summer. Because that would be a drag.

There’s also the possibility that at this point, because I let the allergies have their way with me for so long, my lungs are so irritated at this point that it’s harder than it should be to get me back to what passes for normal for my respiratory system. So maybe I’m not doomed to a lifetime of wheezing my way through every Independence-Day-to-Halloween span, because presumably next year I could start the inhaler and nasal spray and tablets and such as soon as I get the first tickle in my alveoli, and prevent things from escalating past the point of being controllable. Presumably, maybe. I guess in the mean time I need to keep going to the same doctor’s office (I’m supposed to get a full physical for their records before the end of the year) so that if I do find myself backsliding as soon as the pollen counts go back up, I can angle for some help without being that guy who only shows up for his annual Fluonase Rx. Or do most people only see their family GP once a year, if that? Am I confusing this with the dentist who you’re supposed to see at least twice? I don’t usually get sick so I really have no clue.