Didja miss me?

While we were in North Carolina, my sister Sandi looked at my huddled, pitiful, hacking self, and said, "You don't get sick often, do you?"

{cough} "No, " I said. {cough, cough, hack, cough}. "I'm never sick." {cough, cough}

"I can tell," she said, not unkindly. "You're not very good at it."

Truer words were never spoken. I started coughing a week before I left for NC, and I assumed that I would either will it away, or ride it out quickly and easily. Almost 4 whiny, complaining, ugly weeks later, the cough had morphed into a whooping/gasping/nasty sounding thing that made it impossible for me to even walk 2 miles on the treadmill without losing a lung (and running, especially running out in the chilly air, was, and is, totally out of the question). Still, I had taken penicillin (okay, it was OTC Mexican Penicillin, but it was medication, and I did a full course) and I thought I was on the mend. Then on Saturday night I had a breathing episode (which is a misnomer- it was more like an inability to breathe episode), which quite frankly, scared the bejabbers out of me. On Sunday, I went to the Acute Care Clinic where they took one look at me and prescribed an inhaler, steroids, and a strong antibiotic, and very sternly told me that if I wasn't markedly better in 5 days, that I was to return. They didn't lecture about the Mexicillin, but I sensed deep disapproval.

The antibiotic put me to sleep (10 1/2 hours the first day), and the prednisone keeps me up, and the inhaler makes me cough (this is my first experience with one- I bought into the commercial animation, where a puff of magic stuff opened your airways and you breathed easier... not so. The inhaler makes me cough, and it makes my lungs hurt, and it tastes vile and it can cause thrush if I don't rinse my mouth thoroughly, and I have to use it for a full month). But... this morning I had a sensation that I did not, at first, recognize. Then I realized that a car was not parked on my chest. So I may have turned the corner on this thing.

In addition to all that (and Sandi was right- I am terrible at being sick: I whine, I feel sorry for myself, and I am just enough of a hypochondriac that I think I'm far sicker than I am, while at the same time resisting going to the doctor*, which means that when I really am ill, I am REALLY ill by the time I finally do something about it), we have had company for the last 5 days, and I am deep into the first draft of my YA Fantasy (which I rashly agreed to have done on Dec 1)(Is it gonna happen? Maybe. I hope. if I don't sleep for the next 3 weeks).

So, blogging (like my daily 3 mile jog) went by the wayside.

But when I was awake, and not coughing and not blogging and not writing and not sleeping and absolutely not running, I was able to knit and catch up with my fantastic (and very patient) sister-in-law.

I finished the festive socks.

They turned out pretty cool.

And a friend of mine was having trouble with the charts for the Traveling Woman Shawl, so she asked if I would look them over for her. I decided knitting it would be easier than just looking- and I got a good start. I'll post links and all of the stats and the comments tomorrow.

But right now, I think I'll go take a nap.

*this is how pitiful I am- not only do I think I am very ill when I have nothing more than a hangnail, I am afraid that whatever it is that I have, is a whole lot worse than anything that I can imagine, so I put off going to the Doctor because I don't really want to know the real diagnosis. Like I said, pitiful (the only thing that I'm pretty sure that I don't have is Housemaid's Knee).