James' cold and congestion just grew overnight after the Sunday of Anachrocon and he was up all Sunday night coughing. While if you are squeaky-clean healthy Kaiser will let you cool your heels in misery for a week before they prescribe anything, with his health problems James can call anytime. So I stayed home to telework and took him to the doctor at the appointed time. We saw the nurse practitioner; she had blood taken and checked things; he had no fever (in fact, he was around 97°F), and his lungs were clear. So she prescribed something for the cough so he could sleep, gave us additional antihistamines and told us to buy Coricidine and have him rest, and we visited the pharmacy and the vampires and went home.

The cough was still a pain Monday night. We both got up and teleworked, although we were both pretty punchy from lack of sleep. Wednesday we both went into work, although I wish James had remained teleworking; he'd still coughed a lot during the night, waking us both up. I had just gotten everything printed and was starting a new order at a little after eleven when I got a text: he was feeling terrible, it hurt sharply when he coughed, and he had the chills. I wrote Puli an e-mail and went tearing out like Dale Ernhardt, running into traffic jam after jam although it wasn't even noon. When I got home James was huddled up in a flannel shirt, flushed, shivering. Kaiser said to go to urgent care, so we trucked up to Town Center. Apparently everyone else was sick, too, as the waiting room looked like a convention of bank robbers with their masks on. It took us nearly two hours just to get triaged and then there were so many people they had to put us back in the waiting room for a while. When we were finally called back, James was miserably hunched not only in the flannel shirt over his work shirt, but wrapped in Twilight's car blanket because his chills were so bad.

So we were there from one to after seven-thirty, with James having various tests, and watching the most god-awful TV. I can't remember what was on in the waiting room, but it's stuff I won't let Snowy watch because it will rot his little birdie brain. In the treatment room they had Bravo on, and, no kidding, whatever was on involved two young woman looking at dildoes. Finally I found Animal Planet and dogs were on all afternoon. I finished reading an ARC called Falcon Wild about a teenage girl and her falcon who are lost in the wilderness after she sets out going for help for her father, who is pinned in their car after an accident. I really enjoyed it. James had a temp of nearly 102 and they swabbed his nose, drained more blood, x-rayed his chest, and the verdict was...he has Type-A flu.

Yes, he had a flu shot this year. The nurse told me this year's flu shot is only 15 percent effective.

Oh, yeah, and he has pneumonia. He had a pneumonia shot this year, too. And a booster. ::black look::

So after they gave him over two hours worth of IV saline and antibiotics, we headed home in the middle of Jeopardy, having picked up antibiotics and a new thermometer at the pharmacy, having completely missed the pouring rain predicted for early evening (it was wet but not raining as we drove home). Arrived there completely exhausted, had some chicken broth and alphabet pasta which was tasteless but reasonably filling for supper, and eventually dragged our way into bed.

Unfortunately we were both kept up by his coughing and when time came to get up I just went back to bed and slept until ten, and still felt zombified all day. James made himself breakfast, but mostly slept all day or half-heartedly surfed the internet on his little laptop. We just dumped out canned soup for supper and stared with glazed eyes at the television. Thursday night was another cough-fest, but I got up and did my eight hours on the computer, spending half the morning e-mailing back and forth about an invoice that shouldn't have been invoiced. After I wrapped up at four, we went to Kaiser to pick up a couple of prescriptions for James, then came home and ordered supper from China Palace. I think I've had it with wings. Too salty, too saucy. Next time I'll buy and roast my own.

Made the mistake of putting on Thirteen Days at 9:30. Terrific movie, especially liked Kevin Costner as Kenny O'Donnell, but I didn't realize it was so doggone long. I wanted to be in bed by eleven.

While James did sleep some last night, he did wake up, and wake me up, with his coughing. I got enough sleep to have enough energy to take myself off to Costco for more American cheese and Splenda packets for James and the Doctor Strange blu-ray for me. Spent about a half hour at Barnes & Noble seeing if any new series books were out, looking at new SF books for James, and buying the new "Bella Grace" and "Good Food" (I got the new "Milk Street" for James at Costco as well), then got lunch-to-go at Tin Drum, hoping the spices in the curry would help James' congestion a little. His temperature is all gone, but he's still feeling fatigued and stuffy, and is coughing in spasms at least once a half hour.

Labels: magazines, movies, shopping, sickness

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