Heaven knows I'm miserable now...

I've spent the last week or so being as sick as I can recall being in at least probably 10 years. I think it probably started last Monday night. I remember walking out of work and feeling chills even though it was a pretty average temperature out. That was pretty much it for Monday night though, and I didn't really think much of it at the time. Then I woke up Tuesday and felt terrible. I had a fever and my whole head was congested. But then as I got up and started moving around, it seemed to get better. So I took some DayQuil and went to work. And that's when it all fell apart.

By the end of my shift, I started to feel like crap again. When I got home, I took some more medicine and started drinking water like crazy. I took my temperature and despite being on DayQuil, which is supposed to reduce fevers, I had a fever of just shy of 101 degrees. So I called in to work on Wednesday. I can't remember the last time I called in to work because I was actually sick.

So Tuesday night was awful, Wednesday was all pretty terrible, and Thursday started off pretty bad as well. The only way I got sleep either of those two nights was to take NyQuil. It would knock me out for about 5 hours, then I'd have to wait an hour to take a second dose, which would knock me out for another 5 or 6.

It was Thursday night when the fever started to die down. To this point, that's the only symptom that's really changed. My head is still congested, especially my ears, which makes for some lovely dizziness. I did learn some fascinating stuff about health care these days in my travails though:

I went to the quick care clinic at Cub Foods on Friday. For people without insurance, it costs $60 per visit. On the other hand, if I wanted insurance, that would cost me about $300 per month right now. And it wouldn't cover these visits at that rate. I decided to go when, after the fever was gone, I was completely convinced that this felt exactly like every sinus infection I've ever gotten, only worse (and as someone who gets allergies pretty much every spring followed about half the time by a sinus infection, I have a pretty good idea what they feel like). And I figured antibiotics would help.

So, I went in, saw a "doctor" (or more likely one of those nurses that's allowed to prescribe medicine), and was told "Oh, sounds like a viral infection, like a cold. If it doesn't get better after 10 days, then come back and maybe we'll consider it a bacterial infection." I assume that in order to do this, it will cost me another $60.

After being told I wasn't going to get any medicine prescribed, I decided to at least get some over the counter medicine that actually works. After spending a few days on DayQuil and NyQuil and finding they weren't helping my nose, I decided to look up a thing or two. It turns out the drug that replaced Sudafed (making it Sudafed PE) which is now in pretty much everything "may be no more effective as a decongestant than a placebo.".

So I decided I should get some medicine with the real stuff, which they hide behind the counter. I wanted a box of regular Sudafed and a bottle of NyQuil D (apparently the "D" means it actually works). So I picked up the little cards, brought them to the counter, and was told that I could only buy one item at a time (because meth dealers are apparently notoriously easy to dissuade, I guess). Luckily my mom had driven me (due to the aforementioned dizziness), so the pharmacist allowed her to buy one and me to buy one.

So now, just shy of a week into this sickness, I feel about exactly the same as I have for the last 3 days. Since the fever's been gone, I've been pretty functional, but I wouldn't mind going back to feeling comfortable again.