That Amoxicillin High

I really have tried not to turn this into a full-on middle-aged-man blog about my compounding ailments and their attendant treatments. It helps that I've made a lot of choices along the way to avoid becoming the type of person who needs a days-of-the-week pill separator to keep all my regular medications straight. A lot of that has to do with luck and genetics, but I'd say if you ever met my dad, you'd know I have plenty of DNA potholes to swerve around. The goal is to act pre-emptively so none of those holes show up in any of my organs or joints.

So far so good, but that's meant giving up a lot of things in my diet in order to maintain my cholesterol levels without getting on a statin, or limiting myself to certain types of exercise to minimize the impact and wear on the cartilage I seem to be cursed with a familial destiny to lose, seemingly any day now. By the time the old man was my age, he'd already had both knees and both hips swapped out for titanium upgrades. It's fun to be the son of a cyborg as a notion, but it takes on a threatening aspect when you realize the bionic parts are little flags planted by an enemy to show territory irrevocably claimed in a lifelong war its fighting from inside you. There's a breakdown coming, but I always sort of hoped it would be an emotional one first. Luckily I am (so far) not prone to depression, so depending on how it manifests, sometimes a break with reality doesn't sound like the worst idea. As long as wherever I retreat to has OK internet, I can probably make it work. With my luck, even in my escapist alter-verse, it'll still be Spectrum. Monopolies don't have to chase you if they're already everywhere.

But I've already blogged in depth about my colonscopy, so in for a spent penny, in for a spending pound...

I mentioned a ways back how annoyed I was that my post-cold cough had gone on for 10 days. Well, it's 25 days past that last bitching, which means in total I'm going into Week 6 of some degree of coughing. I've taken more COVID tests (all negative) in the past week than entire counties in Tennessee did during the whole pandemic. Luckily for me so far, the outcome has not been the same.

There have been two doctor visits in there, one to urgent care (more out of curiosity than urgency) and one to my primary physician (or rather the nurse practitioner next door, because my doctor is booked out through June). Right now I'm five prescriptions in, including one for a course of antibiotics I finished this morning, to no clear avail. The others are two different cough suppressants, a nasal spray for congestion and a course of steroids to potentially reduce any swelling or irritation in my lungs that that is holding out like Austin Butler's Elvis accent.

I haven't started the steroid yet because, like I said before, I try to avoid the pills when I can. In the midst of all that, I got a chest X-ray to rule out pneumonia, but no results yet. I figure I should wait to find out before I start in with this more extreme treatment since if it's walking pneumonia, I'll need some other antibiotic, they said. I'm pretty confident it's not pneumonia since I have, like, none of the other symptoms for it. I literally just have some minor chest tightness and a propensity to the occasional coughing jag, especially when I'm talking or exerting myself a little. But look, I'm not a doctor, so who knows? Worst case scenario, "walking pneumonia" sounds kind of bad-ass and a little bit zombie adjacent. If my choices are cyborg and zombie so far, I guess I'm leaning zombie, but only because I might already have that thing that's going to turn me. Typically I'm going to prefer the thing that's least invasive. And turning into a zombie is way more invasive for other people, trying to get at their brains and whatnot.

Overall, I don't think it's anything long-term serious, I'm just kind of tired and irritated and over it. I've been ready to be done coughing for a good long while now. It doesn't really fit into my life plan that involves being called "spry" when I reach the age in which that's the highest compliment. I've still got a few years to go before that's where I'm at, but a goal is a goal. And I've got my role-models. I aspire to be the kind of 76 year old who can still get indicted for doing some real crimes. That's some real fourth-quarter energy.