Things Learned While Sick

Last week was educational in so many ways.  I thought I'd share some things that stuck in my mind.

1.  Pneumonia is exhausting physically and mentally.  Besides the coughing fits and difficult breathing, the medicine rendered me more or less useless for most of the week.  I couldn't concentrate on knitting, or reading, or even just glancing at pictures in a magazine.

2.  Rather than waterboarding, I strongly feel that the U.S. government should force detainees at Guantanamo to watch daytime TV.  Particularly without cable.  I was ready to admit to just about anything to get away from it! 

3.  Oprah's farewell extravaganza took longer than Ronald Reagan's week-long funeral.  And even if you were ignorning Oprah's show itself, everything else you saw had a story about the ending of her show.  Oy with the poodles already.

4.  It's difficult to stay hydrated when you can barely stay awake.

5.  People will call you and say things like "Are you taking anything for your pneumonia?" 

6.  Pip is quite the talker.  If you talk to him, he responds most of the time.  My favorite thing last week was one night when I was having a particularly bad coughing fit, and went into the guest bedroom so that I wouldn't keep The Tim awake, since he was going to work the next day.  Pip joined me, and jumped up to sit in the open window, and look through the screen.  A small group of people were walking down our street, and one person had a really loud case of hiccups.  Every time she would hiccup, Pip would say, "mrrak."  When they got to our house, one of the group said, "What's that noise after you hiccup?"  The person said, "What noise?", followed by a loud hiccup, and Pip's response.  At which the person asking the question said "That sound - it happens every time you hiccup!"  This amused me greatly (and still does when I think of it!). 

7.  If you are sick enough, you stop caring that you are using all of your sick days.

8.  If someone is nice enough to pick up your prescriptions for you, be sure to tell them how many there are, so they don't have to turn around and go right back to the drugstore ...

9.  It doesn't need to actually be 95 degrees for you to feel like it is.

10.  No one wants to hear how sick you are after the second day.  ("Well, don't you feel better YET?")

Like the doctor told me, as long as I don't feel worse, it means I'm making progress.  Good thing, 'cause I'm not anxious to spend any more time with pneumonia as my companion anytime soon.  (Or ever!)