Smith Says 2/24 | Columnists | Summerville Journal Scene

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Smith Says 2/24

Published Tuesday, February 23, 2010 12:35 PM

Summerville Journal Scene ®

I woke up last week with my throat feeling like I’d swallowed broken glass. Then I coughed up what appeared to be a chunk of lung, sneezed and cracked a rib.

Yes, the funk done fell upon me. Like the wag once said, first I was afraid I’d die. Then I was afraid I wouldn’t.

My nose dribbled blood and my tongue was coated with a moldy-looking mix of green and brown. My voice was hoarse and cracked; I sounded like a haint keening from the grave.

“Ah don’t fe-heel so goo-HOOD,” I squawked.

“Please don’t talk,” Widdle winced. “Really.”

So I tried to write on the dryboard in the kitchen, but the marker kept slipping from my sweaty fingers, so I gave up and communicated with hand signals and broken hissing.

“I’m going out to the road and lay on the center line,” I said. “Leave me there until at least two SVUs run over me.”

“Lie,” he corrected me. “You lay a brick, you lie in the road. Besides which, it’s Sunday and there’s no traffic until church gets out. Can you wait that long?”?“Whatever,” I said. “Do we have any honey?”

“Oh, holistic healing again,” he groaned.

Mock if you must, but over the years I’ve found that many ills can be nipped in the bud by eating a Spanish onion chased with two tablespoons of honey. Sipping a jug of Gatorade seals the deal.

Unfortunately, this time the onion and honey failed. In fact, the Gatorade brought the whole shebang back up.

When I’m sick Widdle always sits outside the bathroom door, yelling advice: “Put a cold, wet rag on your neck! Hold your breath! Suck on a sock!” (OK, the last one is a lie.)

When I staggered out white-faced, wet and drooling, he put his arms around me. “Go back to bed. I’ll take your temperature.”

We have two expensive thermometers in our house, and they aren’t worth a plugged nickel. One said my temperature was 118 degrees. The other apparently believed I was already dead and didn’t register any numbers at all.

Then it got scary: As I lay (lied?) in bed, suddenly I couldn’t draw a breath. I mean no air, period.

I looked at Widdle and gasped, “I can’t breathe.”

He grabbed his keys and my arm. “Get dressed,” he said. Bent over and wheezing like a walrus, I pulled on tennis shorts and a dog-hair-covered sweater. Off we went to Doc-in-a-Box.

Now, I’m figuring I’ll get a prescription for a broad-spectrum antibiotic and be on my way.

What I got was: tubes of blood drawn, a lung function test, a chest X-ray, a breathing treatment with a nebulizer and a physician’s assistant who listened to my lungs and said, “You sound horrible. How long have you had asthma?”

“I don’t,” I said. “No-one in my family does.”

“Well, you sound horrible,” he said.

Turns out I had bronchitis, a sinus infection and a throat infection (not strep, thanks be to God.)

I walked out with prescriptions for an inhaler, an antibiotic, steroids and codeine cough syrup (which I didn’t fill because codeine makes my heart race like a rabbit’s.)

The funny thing is, I had no fever at all. But at the drugstore, I bought a three-dollar thermometer anyway.

You never know when the funk might fall again.

Julie R. Smith, who is eating the baseboards after a week of Prednisone, can be reached at widdleswife@aol.com.

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104 East Doty Avenue | Summerville, SC 29483 | 843-873-9424 office | 843-873-9432 fax