of course my cold is viral.

i sat in the doctors office on the examination table- do you know how many examination tables i've sat on in my life? waiting for some sort of news? that my brain is working properly? that my foot is no longer broken? that I have some strange stomach disorder? that i have laryngitis, or strep, or mono, or the flu? I'm like an examination table slut.

there's always this burning desire to tell the doctor that. No, I've done this before. I'm a pro. Hey, I get sick a lot. I'm prone to illness. Trust me when I say that I'm probably sick, Buddy, because I'm sick a lot. Eh, Doc, you may think i'm a hypochondriac but I'm not.

My regular doctor was out because of martin luther king day. i go to a spanish/ english branch of brigham and women's because it's close and convenient to my house, but it's pretty funny. i'm usually the only white girl in there, and all the receptionists start out talking to me in spanish. my dumbfounded look usually tips them off. "oh. one of those."

in came my non-doctor, a brusque man uninterested in small talk. he ran through the laundry list with me, listened to me say that i thought it was viral but worth checking out. he looked down my throat, felt my glands, listened to my breathing, and told me it was probably viral. i complained that i couldn't sleep at night. he prescribed me rest, fluids, and codeine with robitussin in it, to ease the pain.


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codeine with robitussin is intense. for the first 12 hours i felt amazing. like i could do anything. i scrubbed my entire kitchen floor with a sponge, as i deemed the mop not thorough enough. i cleaned the whole bathroom, scrubbed down all the appliances in the kitchen, took out the trash, cleaned the litter box, cleaned the fridge, did the dishes. i felt great. and i wasn't coughing. which meant my sore muscles were relaxing. my throat wasn't strained.

around bed time, an interestingly irritating stomach ache set in. it was pretty horrible, actually. it wore off after about an hour, and then i came to find that codeine is certainly not a sleep aide. i spent most of the night with my mind racing. i mulled over everything important and all things not important that i could possibly pull from the very depths of my being. and i really never felt tired. just the irritation that comes with sleeplessness. and frequent trips to the bathroom.

i think i'll lay off the codeine/ robitussin mix. communicating with customers while on it today was understandably unsuccessful.

customer: "Ma'am, I don't really understand this receipt"
me: "yeah.. our receipts are so weird, aren't they? I mean, they're soooo weird."