Two weeks ago I was struck down with a migraine and the
grippe the likes of which left me feeling horrid for four days. Finally on headache day #5, a head cold came
on. After fighting that off for eight
days, including the vertigo that comes with the combination of eye pressure and
sinus pressure, I was again struck down by The Killer Migraine today.
And today, of all days, was Field Trip Day.
For anyone who has avoided the joys of migraines, I hate you
and want to choke you until your face turns purple and your eyeballs bulge
out. That's what a migraine makes you
want to do to anyone within two miles who dares to so much as breathe, as it makes
noise and causes air movement that is painful to one's temples. I figured that combining more than one
thousand screaming children in an enclosed theater with the loud pyrotechnics
of the show plus the nausea of the vertigo brought on by the pain of a headache
strong enough to take down an elephant would probably be a dangerously explosive
combination.
So I did what any sane person would do to avoid being
stranded miles and miles from a relatively quiet classroom with only a
community bathroom should disaster strike:
I called out sick.
Then I did what any insane person would do: I found some
unexpired antibiotics in the cabinet, and I popped one; later, I popped
another.
This morning I started blowing yellow goop out of my nose,
and my cough is getting more persistent.
I am prone to pneumonia, even after the shot, and I didn't want to get
sick yet again. I mean, I've already
been sick for two weeks. Enough
already. Christmas is around the
corner. I don't have time for this shit.
I have a life! I'm somebody!
("The new phonebook's here! The new phone book's here!" Double points to anyone who gets that obscure
reference.)
My nurse daughter frowned when I admitted what I had
done. It was hysterical because I felt
like the little kid who did something wrong and had to tell on myself. It was kind of like, "I know you already
think your mother is a complete blithering idiot, but guess what I did! I took some amoxicillin out of the cabinet …
and I ATE it!"
I look at it this way:
If this is a bacterial infection, it can't hurt. If it makes me feel better psychologically,
then who cares. And if I happen to have
a bladder infection, am suffering from food poisoning, or have contracted gonorrhea,
then I've already started a course of treatment. That, to me, sounds like pure Yankee
ingenuity.
