I’m feeling awful at the moment – my cold has hit with a vengeance and is dragging me down big-style. Most irritatingly, it’s gone to my throat, which makes clearing all the usual gunk off my chest incredibly hard as a tickly cough makes doing good-quality physio almost impossible. Coupled with that, obviously, the gunk that is there anyway (which isn’t getting cleared) is now getting thicker and heavier and nastier with all the cold bugs in it, too, which is making breathing and life in general incredibly hard. It’s basically one great big heap of can’t-breathe-very-well, feel-like-cr@p, need-to-sleep-for-weeks poo.
Of course, me being me, the easiest and most obvious course of action is also the one that my body objects to the most, namely sleeping. Because of all the rubbish on my chest which I’m not clearing, I’m loaded up with stuff which is making breathing hard anyway, but as soon as I try to go anywhere near horizontal (or even just slightly leaned-over) it all starts rumbling around even more and giving me even more problems.
So last night I managed a grand total of about 2 hours sleep and that was taken pretty much because my body literally couldn’t keep my eyes open and my brain turned on any more. No matter what position I was in I would be in some form of discomfort, which was either back pain, shoulder pain, chest pain or all three combined with inability to breathe. I tell you something, struggling to breathe on a machine that’s suppose to help you breathe is not a pleasant sensation.
So last night wasn’t good and this morning wasn’t much brighter – what with the distinct lack of rest and still rumbling chest.
I have, however, made it through to the afternoon now and things are brightening up ever so slightly. My biggest problem has been getting comfortable, as whenever my breathing becomes a problem now it causes all sorts of chain-reactions through the rest of my body, specifically back and neck pain which makes sitting in most positions either painful or hard to breathe.
Most annoyingly, it’s the positions you would imagine to be the most comfortable that I struggle with the most – sitting on the sofa causes huge neck pain, sitting in bed causes lower-back pain and breathlessness and sitting in the comfy chair in the living room causes one of the two, depending on how I sit.
Ironically, sitting bolt upright in the desk chair at the computer is currently my most chest-friendly position. I’ve been in front of the screen for a little over 3 hours now and I’m feeling the best I have all day. I suppose there’s no excuse for me not being productive, is there? Although my brain isn’t entirely switched on at the moment.
Anyway, I thought I’d take the opportunity to catch up on some online diarizing and catching up on the US Writer’s Strike, which has got me bizarrely hooked.
I’m hoping a better day, a better throat and some better physio means that I’ll be able to get better sleep tonight and things will duly improve tomorrow. The resurgence of the cold has coincided once again with the scheduled end-of-IVs, so I’ll be back at Oxford tomorrow but look set to continue into a 4th week of the mega-drugs. Better than ending up feeling even worse and going back on them in a week or two anyway.