Hi. You'll be wanting to know all about what I've been doing lately, I bet. I'm too tired to tell you though - too tired, yes, because I'm still not entirely well. Boy I tell ya, pertussis is terrible. It's been months. A few months, a few ribs, and here we are. I'm getting better and better, every day, but I cannot completely recover until everyone gets a booster shot. I've told everyone I know to go get one, and people seem to agree to it (perhaps to get me to leave them alone), but so far I know of zero (0) people who have actually gotten one. Including my family members. Perhaps I have not been graphic enough in my descriptions of the illness. Is that it? Is it? If so, please read on.
First, it was like a cold. After a week or so, moss started growing in my throat, or cat hair, or hay. I started having fits of coughing, coughing so hard I'd have tears streaming down my face, coughing so hard I'd gag, coughing so much my abdominal muscles were sore. I'd wake up with coughing fits four or five times a night. My inhalations in between coughs were staggered. After a week or so my sides were sore. After another week my back muscles were sore, making my entire circumference sore, making everything I did extremely painful, including coughing, including moving, including going to bed. I had the full-on whoop in between coughs - you know, when your airway is constricted so that the only bit of air that can get into your lungs makes a high-pitched whoosh on the way in. After about three weeks of nonstop coughing and gagging and whooping and tears, the frequency of the coughs started decreasing but the intensity of the coughs increased. I barfed on the floor once (it wasn't my floor). I ran out of food and medicine but couldn't stop coughing long enough to go to the store for a couple days. I was on antibiotics for 35 days and they didn't do a thing. Then I started breaking ribs, pop pop pop. That made my torso even sorer than before, making it extremely painful to think or even to be. The narcotics were a bust. Every single day was the worst day yet, culminating with spectacular misery the day the second rib popped - when that happened I couldn't even walk and I started wondering if I was ever going to get better. Then I thought things were getting better but - cough pop pain, a third rib popped. Then I thought things were getting better again and they really were, albeit very slowly.
I still cough a little, and still whoop a little, and my ribs still hurt a little, and it's the middle of May. People! Pertussis breaks ribs and kills babies! There's a reason they invented a vaccine for it! It's miserable! Stop being such a jerk and go get a shot! Honestly. What kind of idiot catches a completely preventable illness?
Anyway, I was totally going to change this blog into a Missoula crime blog, or perhaps a Missoula health blog, but instead I think I might change it into a Missoula auto blog. My car, as you know, is a showpiece, but for reasons that could not be helped it now smells like tires that smell like shit. I'm hoping the smell is not permanent. I'll let you know next time.
