Library Notes
January 28, 2005
By Pansy Hundley, Librarian.
How many of you have enjoyed this viral/respiratory bug that seems to be attaching itself to everyone? I'm always amazed at how something like this gets started and is everywhere at the same time.
I have certainly had my turn ---twice. I did not realize that I had enjoyed it so much, I'd just try it again.
I had the first round of enjoyment when Suzie and I were loading that U-Haul truck. I kept telling Suz if someone would just keep my nose wiped, I could get something done. Thought I never would get over that round that lasted two or three weeks. I finally went to my Doc. Smith, got three bottles of medicine and lived through it.
I was well for not much over a week and it started again. The 'ole throat began to get sore again That nose, again, started to run away. And, again, I couldn't find anyone to run along beside me and keep it wiped.
I began to cough and cough and cough. I'd wake up several times during the night, non-stop coughing for no reason. I kept good 'ole peppermint on the head of my bed, so that I could reach up at 2:00 AM and pop one in my mouth. That was about all I could find that would stop it. When the stores started to clear out their left-over Christmas peppermint, I went and stocked up. I have peppermint, in addition to the head of my bed, in my purse, my desk, my cabinet and my coat pocket.
I wake up many nights, that peppermint still lodged in my jaw, not having melted all the way yet. And, no, I didn't worry about swallowing it. I was just trying to stop the cough.
Well, having enjoyed this stinkin' bug as much as I could stand, I called Doc. Smith's office for an appointment. I felt so bad I could hardly percolate. My couch called to me every time I passed by it, and even all the way across town, I could hear its' call.
I felt so bad, I thought I might have pharyngitis, tonsillitis, bronchitis and pneumonia in both lungs!
I sat on that examining table and tried to find an answer for that question they all ask me. "How do you feel sick?" Now, I ask you, how in the world do you describe how sick you are or tell them how you feel bad?
You can tell that Doc how your nose if running away, you're coughing your head off and your throat is being ripped out, and you feel horrible. And, they want to know how you feel sick? Duhh
The doc has been trying to find the right medication to get my blood pressure down where he's happy with it. Well, when I went into his office the other morning, the blood pressure was 126/90. I've never seen it that low on the top number before. It's usually from 140 to 157, top number. Well, I told my Doc Smith that, and told him it was that low that morning because I was half dead! And I felt like it.
So, okay he wrote me three more prescriptions, an antibiotic, a decongestant and a cough suppressant. That suppressant, evidently, does not realize what it is supposed to suppress, because last night, at 2:00 AM, I was popping peppermint!
I brought my three new medicines back to the drug store to fill ASAP, because I figured carrying them in my purse would not do the trick of getting me well.
There was already one prescription waiting, from the previous late afternoon, for that recalcitrant blood pressure. So, that meant four bottles of pills. I already had the suspicion that I'd have to mortgage the farm, to get all those different colors and shapes of pills.
When they were ready, I went up to pay and told the ladies that I might just have a heart attack right there in front of their counter when I saw how much the total was. If $213.00 for four bottles of pills is not enough to give you a heart attack, I don't know what would! But, I persevered. I whipped out that credit card, slapped it on the counter, coughed some more, finally got my breath, wiped my nose, took that sack of pills and left.
One pill is so strong, I only take one a day. That's the antibiotic. One pill I take only when I go to bed, ya know, for that coughing. Hah! Then one pill I take twice a day to decongest me.
I shall endeavor to keep all my pills straight, keep peppermint handy at all times, and get over this bug.
Anybody that walks in this library door better not have any germs on them! I'm sick of being sick, sick of coughing and really sick of spending all my money in one place. Anybody coughs in my presence, I'll whip out a surgical mask and put it either on them - or me.
Now, that's enough whining. I need to do something else and you know that will be to tell you about this book, written by Ron McLarty, entitled "The Memory of Running". This is a new one and I am not familiar with the name of this writer. However, one of the teachers read it the other day and said that it was very good. So, come on, give it a try.
"Meet Smithson "Smithy" Ide, an overweight, friendless, chain-smoking, forty-three-year old drunk who works as a quality control inspector at a toy-action-figure factory in Rhode Island. By all accounts, especially Smithy's own, he's a loser. Then, within the span of one week, his beloved parents are killed in a car crash, and Smithy learns that his emotionally troubled, long-lost sister, Bethany, has turned up in a morgue in Los Angeles. Unmoored by the loss of his entire family - Smithy had always hoped Bethany might return - he rolls down the drive-way of his parents' house on his old Raleigh bicycle into an epic journey that will take him clear across the country.
As Smithy pedals across America - through New York City, St. Louis, Denver and Phoenix, to name a few - he encounters humanity at its best and worst and begins to remember an early life that too many beers have blotted out. The baseball games, the home-cooked meals, the soothing presence of his salt-of-the-earth parents: none of it could transform the dark truth of his sister's madness."