Snot Wars, Episode II - Revenge of the Snot

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Hope all of your turkey was moist, your weather was dry, and your gatherings well-lubricated. And that there's less snot in your family than there is in mine.

Well, Liza is mostly cured, with two days left to go on the course of antibiotics she started last week. I think tomorrow I'll take the pillow out from under the head of her mattress so she stops slipping downhill in her sleep.

I have to admit that while the zinc and Zicam routine didn't stop the cold in its tracks the way I had hoped, it did probably reduce the severity of the symptoms, and almost definitely reduced the duration of suffering. I'm still having occasional coughing fits, but otherwise feel fine. There were a couple of crappy days there in the middle, but this cold has been much more manageable than any of my other recent illnesses.

Jason was diagnosed on Monday with bronchitis, given a Z-pack of antibiotics and a nasty-tasting OTC cough suppressant/expectorant/kill all the other cold symptoms solution. The Z-pack ran out last night, the OTC cold medicine ran out today, and Jason isn't better. His doctor told him to come back on Monday if he wasn't feeling better by the time we got home, and he'd run some chest x-rays to make sure that Jason doesn't have pneumonia. Personally, with how wiped out Jason has been this week, and how nasty his cough sounds, I'm going to do everything short of dragging him bodily to the emergency room to get him in to see somebody tomorrow, even though we're out of our normal provider network right now. Pneumonia isn't something you let linger any longer than necessary, lest it send you to the ICU for a week (see Ellen's recent posts of her experience on www.thereignofellen.com blog).

Jason is balking about going to get x-rays here, although he has agreed to call his doctor tomorrow to at least schedule an appointment for Monday. I'm off to look for the doctor's phone number online ...