I hate hot weather

I am melting. I hate hot weather as I said. I am a New Englander, 85 is too hot in my opinion. 25 is a nice winter day. I am counting the minutes until Sunday when it is supposed to top out at 75. Instead of the 100 which is due today.

I want to go to the beach today. My cold is lurking in the background again. I stopped taking decongestants the other day but they were keeping me up at night so I stopped. Now I am all congested again. My ears are more clogged again.

I think I just need a vacation.

Too bad that's not happening for another month.

Okay I learned a few things

I have had this stupid evil cold since Friday afternoon, June 28. It came to me courtesy of my husband. This is a normal event, one family member gets exposed to germs and brings them home to share with other family members.

My theory on colds has always been to take good care of myself and basically ignore them unless I become fairly sick. Rarely does a cold send me to bed for more than a couple of extra naps. I have never had a problem with this theory. Ignorance keeps the colds away.

This worked for decades.

Not any more.

In  the past 24 hours I have learned:
- when you start to feel sick, stop RA drugs
- when you start to feel sick, call your PCP, not after a week or 10 days as I normally would
- colds more easily turn into pneumonia when you have RA both due to the disease and due to the medication.

Today I am home in bed sick again/still whatever. If you are keeping count this is day 14. Normal colds evolve and slowly get better. Evil RA colds, stick around and get worse. My sore throat is gone but my cough is not and my ears are clogged.

I am on antibiotics that I started yesterday morning and if I don't feel better by Saturday I am supposed to go to the walk in clinic. Next Tuesday I see my new rheumatologist and will probably learn more about the common cold with rheumatoid.

The only good side to all this is that the scale seems to be going in the right direction even though I have been eating ice cream every day.

Its been a long couple of days

Wednesday I had my back procedure. Thursday my back hurt less. Friday I started to feel like crap but got a manicure/pedicure in the afternoon to make me feel normal.

Saturday I started feeling pretty bad and took my temperature which topped out at 101.6 at 2am this morning. I couldn't talk and my husband had to screen my phone calls and tell people to email me instead. I feel like all I have done in the past four days is lie around and take drugs - pain meds, cold meds, and tylenol. I have also eaten chocolate chunk chocolate ice cream for its healing properties.

I woke up this morning and my temperature was 98.8 so I think I have mostly recovered. I am finally beginning to think I might survive. I am not going to work tomorrow so I can continue to recover.

But my back doesn't really hurt much any more.

Personally I think that if you have had cancer you should be exempt from the common cold.

Back update

After my lovely adventure Wednesday morning where I definitely felt a few pinches, my back is doing better. After I came home, I took a nap to sleep off the anesthesia. I iced my back all afternoon and on Thursday as well as took pain meds. Yesterday I had less of a need of ice and pain meds.

So far this morning, my back feels okay but I have a nasty cold and am spending the day in bed. But my back doesn't hurt.

I was up until 1230 and then up again at 5 so I am a bit tired as well.

I am optimistic that it will feel better for a year or more. I just have to get over my cold to appreciate it more.

My brain is not working well enough to blog more today. I think I need a nap.

Allow me to be whiney

Its my blog so I can be whiney if I want. If you don't like whininess then just go away for the day. I am going to be whiney today because I still have a cold. Back on March 20, 2008, I blogged about Cancer Vs. The Common Cold and indicated that I was waiting for a cure for cancer and a cure for the common cold. That's plenty of time. I am on day 7 of another evil cold here and I still feel like crap. This is not fair. I am sick of being sick.

I DEMAND a cure for both the common cold and cancer. I am going to be a demanding, whiney brat about this. Its time. Plenty of money has been spent on research for both of them and I do not believe there is an evil conspiracy by the pharmaceutical companies to hide any cures they have because they make so much money on the medications and treatments for both.

I am not being a good patient at this point. I am living on tylenol (no aspirin products for me because I am on anti inflammatories for my back), no decongestants (because between being allergic to decongestants and no thyroid - I can't take anything that says don't take if you have a thyroid disease), herbal tea with lemon and honey, cough medicine, and whininess.

I can't even whine to the cat because he is vacationing at my parents house - not yet returned after our vacation last week. I am whining to my husband but he makes fun of my squeaky voice.

I know if I go to the doctor she will just tell me to drink plenty of fluids, take tylenol, and wait it out. Whine, whine, whine, grr.