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3:37am August 15, 2014

This chest infection isn’t great.

I’m hoping the antibiotics will kick its ass though.  Because… normally it takes a few days for the real symptoms to show up.  But I had coughing up green stuff on the first morning and just woke up with “third-day” congestion and the first day isn’t even technically all the way over yet.

It’s generally not a good thing when it starts off this aggressively.  Even the aspiration was weirdly aggressive – I wasn’t asleep for most of it like usual, but it went on all night long anyway, any time I wasn’t paying attention, bile would come up and I’d start choking on it.  Normally I wake up choking on it in one big burst and that’s how I know it’s happening.  This time there was one time that I woke up and realized I’d been inhaling it (but hadn’t woken up during the act), and then after that it just kept happening, awake or asleep.  And my drainage bag wasn’t working properly, I could feel that much.  In the morning we found a clog in the tube.

I’m just glad I have a standing order of antibiotics at the doctor.  All they have to do is call it and say “Sie aspirated” and I get a script for antibiotics.  That’s how it’s generally done when someone has bronchiectasis and is prone to aspiration, because with bronchiectasis it’s critical to get any infection under control ASAP.  I used to have to waste entire days in the emergency room or urgent care, until someone at urgent care told me to set this up with my doctor.  She refused to even x-ray me, told me it’s usually a waste of time until the third day and she didn’t want to irradiate me with no reason.   And that anyone with bronchiectasis needed a standing order with their doctor anyway, if they weren’t already on prophylactic antibiotics all the time (which I’m not severe enough to need, thank goodness… I get nervous about superbugs every time I go on antibiotics, even when I need them). And so the standing order was born.

I can’t help but feel weirdly guilty about getting alarming medical conditions right when my dad is dying of cancer.  I mean I guess the stress isn’t helping my body fight things off.  But I worry about my family paying attention to my medical problems when they should be paying attention to my dad.  Because I’m going to survive this, and he won’t.  Meningitis and aspiration pneumonia sound scary, but end-stage cancer sounds scarier.  I hope nobody is trying to divide their attention between us in an unproductive way, I’d rather people worry less about me and more about him.  I’m certain I’ll still be around when this is over.