Bronchitis

Warning! This is post is just a rant, ending in a hissy fit, that reflects my lack of sleep and overdose of self-pity, no more, no less. Read at your own risk.

So: I've been sick for the last seven days. It started on the train ride down to Georgia. I took a nap about two hours in, and woke up with a sore throat and swollen glands. It all went downhill from there. By the middle of the night, when I was supposed to be well into my write-on note, I was curled up under my blanket, shivering and sucking on ice cubes, trying to get comfortable in a packed Amtrak coach car. My mom picked me up when I got down to GA, at quarter to seven in the morning, and when we got to my sister's I went straight to the bedroom to crawl under covers. Needless to say, the trip was not what I had hoped for. And? I didn't finish write-on. Ugh. I'm not sure if I really care at this point. I'd settle for a good night's sleep.

Yesterday, I caved in and decided to go to an urgent care clinic instead of waiting til my school clinic (aka FREE clinic) opened after the holiday weekend. It was actually a not unpleasant experience. We had to drive across the bridge to the urban wasteland across the river, but T was kind enough to treat it like an adventure, when I was feeling guilty for making him spend his last day of the long weekend carting my miserable self into an unpleasant suburban ghost town. "Hey, look," he said, optimistically gesturing at the skyline as we drove over the bridge. "See? It's already exciting."

And I have to say, it was pretty exciting that we got into and out of the clinic in only 25 minutes. Plus, I was the only patient they had there. And since they'd only opened two weeks ago, it was incredibly clean. But the best part was that I came away with drugs. Precious, precious drugs. Antibiotics and cough medicine laced with codeine that I was warned would make me very "woozy". Considering I've been up all night coughing for the last seven days, that sounded fan'effing'tastic.

I wonder what it says about me that the codeine didn't knock me out?

Anyway. Today I was determined to *not* lay on the couch all day working on my night cheese and farting into my slanket. So I dragged myself over to campus for my monthly visit with the school psychiatrist to re-up my Prozac. In the course of our meeting, I explained to him that I wanted to "bump" my dose up to pre-law school levels. (What the hell was I thinking, by the way, dropping my dose when I started law school?) We had talked about that last month, but at the time I wanted to give it another month to be sure.

So I'm running through the litany of complaints I have, which I always feel self-conscious about doing, because as anyone who has struggled with low-level chronic mental health issues can tell you, it starts to be unclear whether these things are symptoms or just, well, life. And the doctor says to me, "So you feel bad about yourself?" And I'm like, "well, yeah. Well, sometimes. It gets worse at certain times." And then he delivers the kicker: "Because I've never seen you feeling happy in here." Or something like that. Thus making me want to jump up in his face and insist that I AM a happy person, that I DO like myself, that I'm NOT always bummed out, that I haven't slept for more than 2 consecutive hours in ONE WEEK, etc. etc. And of course, if I were to do all that, it would only make me look more crazy/angry/unhappy or whatever.

I got my higher dose. But he wants me to consider going back to therapy if it doesn't do the trick. For some reason, this pisses me off. But then again, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Apparently it's in my nature.