Down for the count

The family illness machine that is Tori struck again today. About two weeks ago I had the REGULAR flu. I got better after about four days of misery. Sunday night I started feeling achy again, and Monday was back to full blown craptacular. This morning I was having trouble breathing, and was experiencing some serious lung pain, so I broke down and called my pulminologist. After finding out I had a minor fever (99.5) and was coughing, he wanted me to head to the ER for fear I had... sigh... H1N1 aka (in my mind anyway) "stupid pigflu". So we went. We had to wear masks and sit in a special area of the waiting room. Word to the wise, when you are having trouble breathing, putting something over the two orafaces by which you do this does not help. It was a good thing we went when we did though, because by the time we left they had cubicle partitions set up to segregate the waiting room even further and it was overflowing.

Anyway, the wait wasn't too bad, surprisingly. We were back in about an hour. I got checked out and the doctor told me that I sounded a little wheezy. She ordered a chest xray and an ear irrigation in the ear of mine that was hurting (and had been giving me problems since I was about six months pregnant). Chest xrays went quickly. The ear thing was, well, gross. They put a gel in my ear first which felt slightly reminiscient of a slug crawling into my ear. Then they brought over a pitcher of saline and a syringe. The nurse squirted that stuff into my ear so hard I could have sworn it was going to shoot out of my eye socket. Oh, and having fluid sprayed directly into your ear with high force messes with your equilibrium, as I had to grab onto the bed to keep from falling over. Turns out I had some major buildup issues and the q-tips I use after every shower were just making it worse. Go figure. Needless to say, I can hear much better now, and I don't have that swimmers ear feeling anymore. Of course now my other ear seems to be quieter, but heaven knows I don't want to do that whole experience again. OTC stuff to the rescue!

I was diagnosed with pneumonia, given some major antibiotics and cough syrup, and sent on my way. It was probably the shortest ER trip (non-pregnancy) ever. So I am out of commission for a little while, but I have never been happier to hear a diagnosis. I really didn't want to end up in quarantine (along with my poor family members who would have been exposed) with the pigflu.

Zach was really happy to see me when we got home, which instantly made me feel at least 50% better. We spent the night hanging out on the couch waiting for our Dish Network to be reactivated, which unfortunately hasn't happened yet. Grr. I really hate AT&T's customer (dis)service. If we could ditch them and go directly with Dish, I'd bet our experience would be much better.

To close all this happy illness talk, I leave you with an adorable picture I snapped tonight of my boys: Zach, Brad, and Magellan.