Blue Roses

      So, the mystery of my month of health issues has been illuminated.  I finally got in to see the doctor  on Thursday. Note -- I was not waiting out of fear or stubbornness or anything like that; it took me over a week to get an appointment. Just in time too because throughout the last week, it just got worse.  It soon became clear that my headaches were not from caffeine (because I returned to drinking it), but from a sinus infection that peaked Thursday morning. I felt like my head was disconnected from body or like I was walking around in a cloud or something.  This whole sinus infection thing happens to me frequently, but I can't always tell when it is happening because I have allergies, so I take allergy meds and use decongestants year round.  Being a little stuffy is not always a sign of an infection brewing for me, and a lot of time, the decongestants mask the symptoms anyway.  Well... who knows how long I had this recent infection for, but somehow, it caused pleurisy. 

     Pleu what?  Yeah, me too? "Like pleurosis?"  The Tennessee Williams fan in me was thinking, "Ha! I'm blue roses!" But, more importantly, "What IS that?"  I will explain it the way my doctor explained it -- there is a saran wrap like covering around the lungs.  Sometimes, an infection or something can cause it to get inflamed. When that happens, it hurts to breathe, which can make it feel like not enough air is getting in, but that's not the case. (My oxygen level, as I predicted, was 99-100%).  It's just painful (and kind of frightening, because feeling like you are not able to get a full breath is kind of awful).  I'm on antibiotics for the sinus infection and that is pretty much gone, from what I can tell. The pleurisy really sucks though, and I have no definitive answer on when it will go away.  The doctor said a few weeks.  I've found people online who have had it for months. Joy. Blue roses indeed.

        It's sort of a dull pain most of the time, but if I physically exert myself, I get out of breath really easily and then it really hurts. As a result, I've kind of banished myself to the couch for the weekend.  I don't really feel "sick" the way you do when you have the flu, but I guess I'm just trying to manage the pain for now and let myself heal.  I've done a lot of grading and whatnot and I've watched a lot of tv. 

     I decided it was a great time to start a new series, so I started watching The Tudors on Amazon.  The show starts with an ambassador being murdered, which is a great opening for a tv show, but I of course wanted to know if it was true, so I started googling and found out that this particular kinsman of Henry VIII's was not murdered. He died of pleurisy. Nice.