Str8 iLLin'

I’ve been down with a nasty cold since Saturday… at 3:30 in the afternoon, to be exact. It hit me like a truck. Today is the first day I finally feel a little better, but I sound like hell and I don’t look so hot, either. In addition to the sore throat, stuffy head and cough, I’ve also been plagued with a wisdom tooth trying to move in and join the party. So the swollen sore throat combined with the swollen sore gums, and my jaw hurts. Basically, I feel like I swallowed a wad of steel wool, my airways are packed with glue, someone is standing on my chest and repeatedly kicking me in the face.

Then, you want to know what I did to make it worse? Tuesday morning I woke up for like the fifth time because I couldn’t breathe, and my jaw hurt so much I couldn’t stand it. I went to the freezer and wrapped an ice pack in a towel and took it to bed. The ice pack gave me enough relief to fall back asleep, but when I woke up I had developed the first stages of frostbite! My cheek was covered in puffy red blotches—what a dumbass! I called the nurse line after like 8 hours with no improvement and they told me not to put ANYthing on it, so I applied some aloe gel. It actually helped; the redness and puffiness nearly disappeared so I don’t have to go to work looking like a leper.

The RNs I’ve spoken with on these 24 hour nurse lines don’t seem to know jack shit. I ask fairly simple questions and I can never get a straight answer. How they manage to be practicing nurses without knowing any symptoms for any conditions is totally beyond my comprehension! The always have to look shit up, be it fainting, concussion, menstrual pains/abnormal bleeding, frostbite, colds, you name it! Every time I call I spend several minutes listening to “Ummm, let me look that up…uh, I think it’s this, I’m not sure…Um” and then they tell me to see the doctor. Well then what is their job, if it’s not troubleshooting health problems??

Enough about them, I’ve already given them too much of my time.