TKOG Who self-medicates

NTKOG #121: The kind of modern-day shaman whose purse rattles with pillboxes because, dude, whatever ails you? There’s a cap(sule) for that.

I am: a total seventeenth century French peasant when it comes to treating illnesses.

I am not: sure what I’d do without my friends. I can’t count the times I’ve lay in bed with a multi-hour weeping headache before one of them gchatted and asked, “Uh, did you take an aspirin?” NO GUYS THAT DID NOT OCCUR TO ME! It never occurs to me.

The Scene: Magic School Bus voyage into my body, which apparently knows I’m jaunting off to Barcelona in two weeks and is determined to kill my pre-trip productivity with a two-week bender. Headaches, lucid fever dreams, sore throats, congestion — I’ll spare you any further details. Unless you urgently require a lengthy discussion of mucous, in which case, you can gchat me or just cut right to the chase and marry me already.

But instead of ignoring my symptoms this week, as physical side effects cropped up at work, I’d pop out to Walgreens and buy the appropriate OTC drugs for my symptoms. Headache? Aspirin! Muscle ache? Aleve! Sore throat? Oh blessed life-giving Dayquil. And what do you know — this was actually going pretty well: symptons were under control, my time-of-sickness Twitter obnoxiousness was an at all-time low.

And then.

The problem with trying to thwart your body’s attempts to torture you, it seems to me, is that symptoms are like puppies. If you crate the little fuckers, the second you let them out, they will throw a rampage the likes of which cannot be controlled by god or man. Thursday night, I got home — beaten down by a few days of work drama and too little sleep — and passed out around 6pm, without dosing up. I awakened twenty minutes later WITH MY THROAT SEALED SHUT.

Oh yeah, guys. My whole throat, completely constricted. For four minutes, I drowned in oxygen, pulling so hard for a breath that my eyes went blodshot from straining. Fortunately, right as I was googling “emergency tracheotomy,” my throat finally relaxed.

Googling narrowed my symptoms down to some combination of allergies, acid reflux, fungal infection from improperly stored wine, and just watching too much House. When I went into work, I told my co-worker the story, and she immediately asked: “Well, you took a Benedryl, right? You should take a Benedryl.” Perfect for my week of NTKOG! I popped down to Walgreens, picked up a package, then laughed at the wimpy little pills and chugged back three of them with a can of Fresca.

An hour later, I learned what everybody else in the world already knows: Benedryl is basically a sleeping pill with allergy-relieving side-effects. Holy shit. Five hours later, my boss finally peeled me out from my under-the-desk naptime and ordered me to drink some espresso until the effects wore off.

I’m still not sure they have.

The Verdict: Dude, this whole “modern medicine” thing is a total crock — if it were really modern, the manufacturers would have tweeted me the damn dosage and side effect warnings and saved me from this horror in the first place. Still, I’ll grudgingly admit that actually medicating an illness is better than my usual hippie strategy of just waiting for it to go away. Fine, modernity. You win this round.

Tagged as: forgive this post i am cracked out on a proprietary blend of benedryl and fever dreams, hippie, in sickness and in health, medicine, modern life, my throat is still sore but not as sore as it would be if i'd actually gone through with the emergency tracheotomy, stories i should not tell the internet, the ex always gave me medicine with little cups full of water -- i miss that