Where Was I?

Getting older has some nasty consequences, one of them being it takes longer to get over ailments that a younger me would have shaken off in a few days. I came back from my vacation with a cold. I didn’t expect it to be a big problem; I often catch colds on plane flights. I had one coming back from London last year.

The week I got back from vacation, I had an appointment with my rheumatologist’s PA, who noticed my husky voice and asked if I had seen anyone about it. I explained I had only had it a few days and expected it would go away on its own. A week later, I also had a hacking cough and a persistent, mild headache, not a migraine, so I went to the urgent care center and got a diagnosis of bronchitis, prescriptions for prednisone and Tessalon Perles and the advice to rest, after I mentioned that I hadn’t been coughing at the Y the day before. I have had bronchitis before and it’s annoying but not deadly, so I figured I would be okay in a few days.

What happened in a few days was that I developed a nasty crackling sound in my breathing and a plugged up ear. I called the urgent care center back and was given a prescription for an antibiotic and an inhaler. A few days after that, I was still crackling and saw my PCP for an X-ray. I did not, as I feared, have pneumonia, but by this time I had been sick for 3 weeks, had lost several pounds, and was extremely tired. 

The antibiotics finally kicked in, the crackle went away, and I only needed the inhaler at night, but until this week, I have been tired all the time, especially after the mildest exertion, began coughing again whenever I went out anywhere, and spent most of the day napping wherever I sat. 

It is just this week that I finally feel back to normal, picking up the household tasks that I meant to do the week after vacation. All in all, it took a month for me to recover from my little cold.

So that’s why no blog posts. I was too tired even to think coherently.

I intend to post a few more posts about my vacation, although maybe not as many as I had originally planned. I did at least get my photos sorted out while I was ill. Some of those I definitely want to share.