Sick
Things have been stressful lately to the point where I suspect that my being stressed out led to a rather severe case of tonsillitis this past week.
My ears had been tender for a few days prior to all this, and since I had childhood (and occasional adulthood) ear infections, I tend to be hypersensitive about them even as an adult, especially since I had an ear infection only a few weeks ago; I can recognize when I'm about to get one and when it will relate to something more severe. I woke up last Saturday at about 5:30 a.m. with exceptional throat pain, the likes of which I could not ever remember having. Fevers came; fevers broke. I could barely talk; I was coughing up some pretty nasty stuff. But thinking I was struck down with a violent cold, I tried drinking as many liquids as I could, but nothing helped. Drinking anything was extremely painful; I didn't even try eating.
On Sunday morning Ed drove me to the Taylorsville Urgent Care Clinic, arriving shortly after it opened at 8:00 a.m. The doctor made several "yikes, that looks pretty atrocious" noises, which one doesn't necessarily want to hear, but it was good to know that I wasn't making any of this up. He sent me on my way with prescriptions for heavy-duty ibuprofin, hydrocodone, and amoxicillin. He said not even to worry about eating, just to keep myself full of fluids so I wouldn't become dehydrated. And to come back to the clinic in 3-4 days if I wasn't feeling better.
Because I was in so much pain, I took more dosages of the hydrocone and ibuprofin than I should have. And because I couldn't eat, the pain medication made me feel nauseous.
I wasn't feeling better, so we traipsed back to the clinic Wednesday afternoon. The same doctor saw me, took another look at my throat, and declared it to still be in pretty bad shape ("although at this point I'm not sure what else to do"). I had finished the hydrocodone but still had plenty of ibuprofin. He gave me a prescription for a four-day course of steroids, something for the nausea, and eardrops for the ear infection that he begun to settle in my left ear, and advised me to come back in another 3-4 days if things weren't feeling better.
Fortunately, things have begun to improve. My ear no longer hurts; the swelling in my throat has gone down significantly. (For a while it felt like I had a marble lodged in the left side of my throat; I couldn't swallow it but I couldn't cough it up.) My throat is still a bit tender; I'm still coughing up some nasty stuff, but much less of it. The nausea disappeared when I cut back on the painkillers. I can talk, but talking too much makes me cough, but I'm beginning to be able to chatter with Ed like we normally do.
We're at the point in the wedding planning where, with two months to go, we've begun having to make decisions again. Nothing particularly bad - and indeed, much of this is rather fun, choosing the music and the food and the minutiae. But it's also a reminder of how much this wedding is costing us financially, which leads us to have some of the difficult and potentially painful financial discussions the soon-to-be-married need to have. Because I've been so sick this past week, my emotional defenses have been down, so everything has been more on the forefront than it normally would be. Things that would bother me less, or that I would have a better idea how to respond to, leave me a bit at a loss. Once or twice I've found myself if not in tears, then needing to remove myself from the situation so I could calm myself down, or at least take a couple deep breaths.
What's on my mind through all of this is that I want to start off our married life with a history of good communication, not yelling at each other. I can handle arguing, but I cannot take yelling in an argument.
Fortunately, I'm a lot better, but I'm still not feeling entirely myself. I still don't have much of an attention span, and am feeling out of sorts, emotionally, mentally, and physically. I've barely left the house this week, which means I've been climbing the walls (not so good for the shorter temper). I missed Mass last weekend as well as on Ash Wednesday; I cancelled all subbing gigs I had this past week.
Tomorrow we'll head back to church, and we need to do some serious food shopping this weekend as well. Perhaps I'll also take a short walk, too, if I can.