TYPHOID MARY
17 December 2002
I hated the people renting cars. I stood there watching them board
the bus that would take them to the car rental area, and I looked daggers at them.
I also hated the people who had parked in "daily
parking,", and who climbed up on the cheery orange bus and headed off to
"daily (read: more expensive) parking."
I even hated the people taking the city bus, that bus which will
take you from the doors of the Sacramento Airport to a block from home for only $1, as I
watched them hop up the stairs and take off in the direction where I dearly wanted to
head.
Most of all, I hated the driver of the "Economy parking"
bus who seemed to have gone to San Francisco for a coffee break.
We were a rag-tag group of travelers, at the end of our
flights--from wherever, all huddled together in a soggy group with the temps in the low
40s and the wind whipping through us, making the wind chill factor drop the temps even
further. I hunched over, wrapping my coat closer about me, sorry that I'd decided to pack
the sweatshirt in the suitcase and only wear the lightweight t-shirt. I was beginning to
think I'd never be warm again.
Several weeks ago, my primary care physician prescribed some
lisinopril for me, to help reduce my blood pressure. It worked amazingly well within 2
days. "It might leave you with a dry, hacking cough," he told me, advising me
that if this happened, I should just quit it.
Well, "dry hacking coughs" and I are old friends--I have
low grade (not-necessary-to-treat) allergies, and I frequently cough a bit. After starting
the lisinopril, it seemed I would have about an hour a day of coughing, but I couldn't
tell if it was the medication or my normal cough. I mentioned it to the Pharmicological
Doctor I saw a week ago, and he didn't seem to think that it was serious enough to stop
the medication, especially since it was working so beautifully.
So when I flew off to LA, it was with the occasional dry hacking
cough that I'd been having for as long as I could remember.
Problem was that the cough seemed to get worse by day 2 and I
finally told Michael I was going to go off the medications for a few days so I could see
if this was a medication-induced cough, or an allergy cough.
It didn't necessarily help it, it changed it. Instead of a
dry hacking cough, by yesterday morning I could feel the start of a deep chest cough, the
kind that comes from your toes and rips your lungs out on the way to exploding out your
mouth. Such fun when you're in a theatre trying to keep quiet so as not to disturb the
actors on stage (though after about 20 minutes into Judy's Scary Christmas, I was
angry enough at having been duped into thinking this was going to be a good show that I
didn't really care if I disturbed them at all!).
I went to the Zephyr theatre that night with Steve and Jimmy and
while I sat through sound check and warm ups and the photos I was taking, and then waited
for The Big Voice to start, I was aware that my nose had started dripping pretty
much uncontrollably. And I sneezed a couple of times.
Holy shit--this was turning into a full blown cold. Had I arrived
with a cold? Had the normal cough covered up other symptoms? Or did it develop while I was
there? And what in the hell was I doing hanging around two guys with AIDS when I had a
cold??? In addition to what was now becoming a really miserable state of health, I was now
also wracked with guilt for having brought disease onto the scene as well.
By the time I got back to Michael's, I could barely breathe, and I
was afraid I wouldn't be able to sleep, but I propped myself up and literally passed out
for the night, awaking at 5:30, in time to get packed and out to the sidewalk by 6:30 when
Steve picked me up.
I huddled in the airport waiting room, sucking on a bottle of water
(no food--I couldn't taste anything anyway). Fortunately the flight wasn't full, so I
didn't have to sit next to someone. By the time we landed, I felt like the walking
dead--and then had to stand out in the cold wind for 20 minutes waiting for the damn bus.
When I finally got to the car, I cranked the heat up as high as it
would go and shivered all the way home. I just wanted to get in a hot shower and breathe
some hot steam and open some clogged passages, but there was a message from Dr. G asking
me to come in early so we could go over some work before the patients started arriving.
Even he could see I looked like hell when I got to work. He
brought me some TheraFlu and some cold capsules which got me through the afternoon, though
I felt kind of like a zombie. Now the effects of the medications have worn off and I'm
starting to feel flu-ish again. I'm going to go to sleep early and hope that tomorrow will
be a better day.
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