How "just irritation" and I spent our sunday evening in the ER [and not the one with Noah Wyle either]

So, the death cold I mentioned a few posts ago? It's almost gone. Finally. I've had it for over three weeks and was getting to the point where I was starting to feel like I would just have it forever. I actually felt gross enough to go to the doctor about a week in, which worried p to no end, as he knows I would not normally go anywhere near a doctor unless parts of me are actually falling off, or large quantities of blood are no longer where they were supposed to be. But the doctor brushed me off with an "it's just irritation" diagnosis. Well, the "just irritation" proceeded to hang around and almost kill me for the next two and a half weeks. "Just irritation", my ass.

So this cold primarily involved a "just irritation" cough that was about a twelve on the richter scale. This cough was intense enough two weeks in to actually pull some of the muscles on the right side of my rib cage. This hurts a lot - rib cage muscles are some of the ones you never realise how much you use until they hurt. But it wasn't that bad - just the occasional cursing under my breath when I moved too fast.

Then Sunday at rehearsal I did something terrible to them. I don't know what this something was, but man, it sucked. [I'm going to guess it was "just irritation"] Suddenly, my pain was reaching a whole new level. It hurt to breathe. Every once in a while I would move my arm or my body in such a way that the pain would take my breath away completely, and I wouldn't be able to talk. I sneezed once and thought my lung had actually been punctured. Holy wow, I swear to never, ever sneeze again along as I live. I was shaking. I have never been in that much pain.

But I was teaching, and I was being all super-girl, so I didn't want the kids to see me a) wuss out or b) break down completely. What I really wanted to do was curl up in a small ball on the gym floor and commence whimpering and begging people to take me out of my misery. What I actually did was hold it together until I got out to my car in the parking lot and tried to shift into reverse to drive away, which caused my ribs to flare up and me to burst into tears.

I was supposed to go to p's so I call him up, he hears the state I'm in and convinces me [it took very little convincing] to go to the emergency room, he'd meet me there. So I drive to the hospital, crying the whole time, manage to pull myself together enough to talk to a nurse, and get sent to various places, poked in various ways that really hurt, x-ray'ed and finally told that I had badly pulled all the muscles on the right side of my rib cage, but that I was all clear for cracked ribs, clogged lungs and pneumonia. They drugged me up and sent me home.

p was absolutely lovely all night, displaying just the right amounts of sympathy and pity. He also brought me Pita Pit with both kinds of cheese and tzatziki, which is enough to make me love him forever, if I didn't already.

So now I'm on various painkillers and regular ice applications, and trying very hard not to be the big whiny baby I would very much like to be. We'll see how long that lasts.

And just for the record? It was not "just irritation!"