You have been coughing non stop for two days. You are a female who has given birth, you are north of 55 years old and running out of laundry. You sat in your car the afternoon before so you wouldn't disturb the house hold-which is your husband, three dogs and a cat- with your massive, relentless coughing. It comes out of nowhere without warning, and does not stop. It feels like there's a tickle in your throat that you're trying to work out, but there is not. You know this because you have coughed hard enough to throw up several times and it does not abate.
You wonder if your eyeballs are going pop out.
You cannot control your bladder.
This is the most embarrassing part that you will do anything to hide from your loving partner of 34 years. As you've not had a period in a year, there are no products in your house, and you are not Door Dashing Depends.
So you hide in your car, in your driveway, under the guise of "disturbing the household" .You order Door Dash Delsyum because you can't go to the grocery store, even though you are in your car. You would find this hilarious if you could stop coughing.
An hour into your driveway adventure, and half an hour after videotaping the door dasher bringing cough medicine to you in your car to amuse your friend, you fall asleep. Until you start coughing again. You realize this is more than a polite Poise moment, and the Depends would be best for the deluge. Without them, a towel will have to suffice.
Day 3
You feel good-ish for a minute and realize the dog and cat fur are not helping. You can't move much without coughing, but you must do something about the cat box. It is also not helping. In a show of superhuman strength against increasingly sore abdominal muscles,you pick it up, haul it down the stairs inducing another coughing fit, hope you fall down the stairs and die because death is easy. You do not fall, so you continue to the driveway. Now. You are coughing so hard you cannot breathe. Even if you could, you lost your voice two days ago. You are in what remains of sweats and a t shirt you've had on for a day.
You smell.
As you are hacking and dumping the cat box into your trash can at the top of your driveway, two handsome young men with clipboards begin to walk toward you.
This is one of many times in your life you wonder when we stopped "reading the room".
"Are you the homeowner?" He asks with a smile.
You are too sick to be clever, you're just annoyed. "Yes, and I'm sick as fuck so back off friend." Your voice sounds like it's coming through a garbage disposal direct from hell.
Seemingly surprised that you are not at your Sunday best, his smile falters only a moment and he continues to move toward you. "Yes, I hear it in your voice."
You shake your head in disbelief and wave him off. The energy you had to muster to speak plus the litter dust has now taken you out of any possible human interaction. You look at the young man and see fear in his eye as he backs off. Took him long enough. You start coughing again as you go back inside, the kind of cough that shatters ears and rattles ancestors.
First your ribs hurt a bit, then your stomach, then you wake yourself coughing at a strange angle and are sure something snapped in your sternum.
Day four.
Three Covid tests say you do not have Covid. The fog horn tone of your thrashed voice makes you conclude it's bronchitis. As you are not a medical doctor, but have diagnosed yourself and your children correctly many times, you know you have bronchitis.
While changing the sheets, you note blood on your pillow case. Something triggers in your dehydrated brain and your remember you had a bloody nose with this "bronchial virus" a few days ago.
It has now been five days. Time has no meaning.
The petulant child doctor at urgent care insists it's a virus, not bronchitis, so no antibiotics. No treatment other than steroids, cough medicine and "hydrate". Which the male child doctor shows no hint of understanding that is not going happen. It's now been five days and you are out of laundry, and cannot go to the store for any reinforcements without frightening the patrons with your Vincent D'Onofrio Men in Black impression and you fear the lovely King Soopers woman who mops the floor will have to follow you.
Sometime between coughing and peeing and sleeping, in the worst of it, you text your friends a photo of you singing at Red Rocks in 1983 for graduation. You write "In case I die today, here is proof I sang at Red Rocks." They reply:
S: Don't die. I've got a full day.
E:Your death is important to us. Please stay on the line...
You are not a pleasant sick person. You can only be a victim for so long before you become angry. Day five is the day this happens. You look back on how you growled at the young man on day two and realize you were also angry then, but that's on him. Read the room, dude. The only solution is to build a fort in the bedroom and hide. But the dogs think it's a game and make you angry. So you have to punch them. Read the room, buddy.
The dogs think it's a jumping punching game, so now you've no choice but to put them outside and hope they run away.
You sleep for twelve more days, and when you get up it's only been seven days since this nightmare began and the dogs are back.
You've not had a period for a year, but apparently one can cough oneself backwards, out of menopause. Neat. Still no products for either issue. But a fun footnote.
You woke up coughing after foolishly believing you could sleep on your stomach for the first time this century, only to definitely pull your sternum away from your body, which is not good and it upset the dog who is now whining. God you hate that dog.
Your husband wakes up with a cough on day eight and you think, glory, we can be sick together! And on our anniversary, how fortuitous. He sleeps in for two hours and gets up just fine, mows the lawn, washes the cars. It's fine, he's fine. He kicked it. Happy anniversary.
That night, you are cloistered in the bathroom at two a.m. not coughing so much as choking and gagging and gasping for air. The hot shower is of little comfort. You think "This is how I die" and lie down on the shower floor.
There remains no choice but to request bladder control products from the "Dear God I'm 80" section of the grocery store. However, you cannot go yourself, you cannot ask your husband and you cannot Door Dash because that's more humiliating than asking the man you've been married to for 34 years. And somehow more humiliating than coughing up your lungs inside your car, parked in your own driveway, sitting on a towel accepting Door Dash Delsym through the window. And so concludes the concept of that "choice".
It is day eight. There will not be a day nine.
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