Back in the middle of May, I caught a head cold. No big deal, I thought, it’ll be over in a few days. But it wasn’t… a week later I was still blowing my nose and coughing. That’s OK, I thought, I usually get over these things quickly…just a few days more and I’ll feel fine. Another week goes by… still blowing my nose and coughing. But I’m thinking that it’s just a little bit of a tough cold, and I’ll be OK in another few days. Now, in the midst of my illness, Emily and I hosted a family reunion with all our kids and her parents and sister, and that kept me busy and preoccupied for the Memorial Day weekend - in fact I took extra days off work, so I had a nice little mini-vacation, and I thought it would be good for me to be off work and rest. Well, I was off work, but with 14 extra people in our home, there wasn’t much rest for anybody. By the time that weekend was over I wasn’t feeling any better and had been sick for over two weeks. So I started back to work - I had been working while I was sick - and I began to think that I really needed some rest to help me feel better. So I worked a couple of half-days, going home early to an afternoon nap, but I was starting to feel even more tired, and I was amazed at the amount of “fluid” constantly being produced by my sinuses that needed to be blown out of my nostrils. But now whenever I blew my nose, in addition to the rivers of viscous mucus flowing out, I was also starting to feel pain behind my eyes, and that pain developed into a headache that felt like it was pounding the inside of my forehead every time I coughed or blew my nose. By now I had had this cold for over three weeks, which is not a good thing, and Emily was starting to suspect something more than a cold. It was time to visit my doctor, and he confirmed Emily’s suspicions: I had a sinus infection. He prescribed a 5-day dose of Levaquin which, although it is a bit expensive, is a very effective antibiotic. I just finished my treatment and I’m still a little tired, but my head is all cleared up and the coughing has finally stopped. And best of all, my mucous membranes have cut back on their production of extraneous amounts of nasal secretions.
And I didn’t even say “snot”.
