Musings And Strange Searches

I'm still suffering some of the after effects of the myriad infections of last week.  The chest infection is still causing me some problems; every now and again, for no apparent reason, I start coughing and find it difficult to stop.  It's a real chesty cough and occasionally it catches me so much that I end up gasping for air and with stars spinning in front of my eyes.  I'm sure it will eventually get better but it is still draining me of what little energy that I have.  I also seem to have a lot of catarrh and I will be glad to be rid of that too.

I have also been having to sleep quite a bit over the last few days. I expect that is as a result of the infections too.  Most of Tuesday was spent in the arms of Orpheus and I managed to sleep at night too, yesterday was a little better with me only sleeping for most of the morning, and today I slept until about 9am.  I shall have to set my alarm tonight because tomorrow morning I have to get up early for my psychotherapy appointment.

On Monday I went to make the video that was postponed a couple of weeks ago because of the maker's illness.  It was decided that to protect my anonymity in view of the subject matter of the video that my part of the video should be done as a voiceover of my presentation.  It all went fairly smoothly and I am now waiting to receive a copy of it to give my approval for its use.  It should be interesting because with my voice being very husky because of the chest infection it will be almost impossible for anyone who doesn't know me exceptionally well to recognize my voice on the video.

Today is the first time that I have actually felt inclined to update my blog, and prior to writing this post I have spent a little time looking at who has been viewing my blog over the last few days.  It can be very interesting to see what leads people to your blog in the first place.  Depression and psychotherapy are often the search terms entered into Google, but over the last few days there have been a number of searches from one country which have used a completely different search parameter.  For some strange reason there have been a number of searches from India for the search term "Procrastination is the thief of time", something that I wrote a post about a few days ago.  I'm not sure whether it is a school essay or one for university students, but there have been multiple searches.  Unfortunately I don't think that my blog will have helped any of them to write their essays, but it has amused me to have my blog come up in these circumstances.  And I'm not easily amused at the moment.

Bed Rest And Penicillin

I really appreciate the kindness and thoughts of Alison, The Dotteral, and cb who have all commented on my post of yesterday about how I hate having a cold. I can usually cope reasonably well with such things but I seem to have been knocked for six this time, so much so that I just had to go to see my GP this morning. And it seems that it was just as well that I did, for what I thought was just a simple cold is not so simple after all.

I knew by yesterday evening that I was getting worse, so I went to my surgery's website and booked an appointment with my GP. When I went in to see him, I think he thought it was because I was still feeling very low with depression as he had told me on Monday that if I was still feeling bad on Friday I was to come back to see him. But when I told him about the golf balls in my throat and the cotton wool in my ears he realised that I was there about quite a different matter.

He looked at my throat, peered into my ears, then listened to my chest, and the diagnosis is a host of infections. The throat and ear infections are almost certainly linked and are viral, however, the chest infection and bronchitis seem to be something separate and almost certainly bacterial so it is a course of penicillin for that. There were also instructions to go home, not to go out for at least 48 hours, to take paracetamol every 4 hours for the fever, and that it would be better if I went to bed so that I could keep warm and sleep whenever I felt like it.

So, when I left the surgery I went to the chemist to get the prescription dealt with, to the corner shop to get some more tissues and some sweets to suck to help with the soreness in my throat (I don't think that you can beat a boiled sweet for helping in these circumstances) and then home to get back into bed. I am armed with my laptop so that I can keep in touch with the world, the box of tissues, plenty of drinks and a couple of books, and I will rest as I have been told to and only get up for calls of nature and to get myself the occasional sustenance.

That is the biggest problem with being on my own. There is no-one to look after me and to take care of my needs when I am ill. So I will just have to hope that the antibiotics take care of what will probably be the worst of the infections and that bed rest, a warm environment, and time will take care of the rest. I'm feeling so ill that I don't even have the energy to be depressed about it all.