Body 01 Mar 2006 10:12 am
Where’s Cam?
After coughing for weeks and weeks, I finally went to the doctor. Diagnosis: sinus infection.
My goodness, I’m sore. Sure, we all get sore from coughing, but I’ve been bracing myself against the cough, and now even my hamstrings are sore. That’s just wrong.
So I am not exactly my normal bubbly self (Yes, bubbly. What?) and writing hasn’t really been my thing these last few weeks. Coughing and grumbling and waiting for spring have been my thing.
on 01 Mar 2006 at 9:53 pm 1.mizducky said …
Get well soon, dear.
on 02 Mar 2006 at 10:38 am 2.Ulysses said …
Yuck, get well soon.
At least it has started to seem like spring already…
on 02 Mar 2006 at 2:19 pm 3.mia said …
Yeeesh. This has been the season for the ick(s).
Hope you’re on the mend.
on 03 Mar 2006 at 7:43 am 4.McJulie said …
I sympathize. I have had coughs like that, you know, the full body workout cough. They are miserable and debilitating.
What are they treating sinus infections with these days? Last time I went to the doctor for one, about seven years ago, I was given antibiotics which seemed no more effective than warm salt-water rinses and waiting. So I’ve never been back.
on 03 Mar 2006 at 9:39 am 5.Cam Sculpin said …
From what I’ve read, conventional treatments fall into two basic categories: warm salt-water rinses and waiting, and antibiotics. The antibiotic of choice is usually in the azithromycin family, I’m told, which is too bad because Zithromax gives me hives. The world sure has a lot of texture when you’ve got hives.
I’m seeing a naturopath, so the first line of defense is herbal stuff. (The second line of defense is still antibiotics; if I weren’t a whole lot better today, I’d be going on the amoxicillin. If this ND were strongly against antibiotics, I wouldn’t be there. Ditto if she were prescribing silver or homeopathic remedies.) It’s mostly just putting a little kick into the saline-rinse-and-wait treatment.
I’ve got a neti pot (which I love, against all expectations, and vow to use every day) and to the normal saline solution I add a few drops of a tincture of goldenseal, garlic, and oxyquinolone sulfate — stuff with a pretty mild topical antibiotic effect. I’m also taking extra vitamin C and, for the cough, an elderberry mixture in hot water.
Plus I’ve been told to limit dairy and sweets, get lots of rest, get a little light exercise, and drink a whole lot of hot water with lemon and a little honey.
I was so sure this wasn’t going to work well at all. I was humoring the hippie stuff, and then by God I was going to get some mainstream drugs to kill off the evil stuff breeding in my head. But I’ll be damned if I’m not feeling better than I have in six weeks.