Ah, the joys of strep throat!

My “summer cold” turned out to be rather more serious than I thought. I was up much of the day Thursday and all day and night Friday because I was coughing so much I could not sleep. I really should have gone to an urgent care place yesterday, but I thought my condition was improving. Big mistake: I spent last night in much misery. Again, I could not sleep at all. And I was so grumpy and uncomfortable with the utter wretchedness (and also the retching, heehee, I made a pun) of it all that I couldn’t really do much of anything, not even read much. My abdominal muscles actually hurt from all the twisting and stuff from my coughs. Of course the over-the-counter stuff didn’t help — it never does. I’m so glad Michael and his roommate went to Columbus for the weekend so they were not exposed to either my germs or my noise.

So I drove to an urgent care center early this morning; I was their first patient at 8:00 a.m. I really only went to get some real cough syrup; I figured my immune system could handle the rest. But Urgent Care said I have strep throat. They gave me a breathing treatment which helped a little bit while I waited for the pharmacy to open at 10:00 a.m. After buying the medicines (antibiotics as well as Tussionex) I went home and here I am.

I have now been up for around 60 hours and my brain is starting to get a bit twitchy on me. It’s been years since I’ve had such a long consecutive period of sleep deprivation. I used to stay up for days and days on end deliberately, just because I could, but my mother, boyfriend, doctor, therapists, college roommate, friends and virtually everyone I’ve ever met in my entire life were finally able to convince me that those binges are a bad idea, so I stopped doing them. I really wanted to see Michael today and find out how his Columbus weekend was, but I might just have to put that off and sleep instead.

I hate you, Streptococcus bacteria. Boo! Go away!