Under the influence

Aisling and I are winding down with our colds -- she is completely recovered, and I'm all done but the coughing, which is what I do when I get sick. I cough. I cough until my children threaten to petition the court for emancipation to some non-coughing household; until a decree nisi shows up in the hand of a process server on my porch. I cough until the dogs hide under the beds and until the neighbors call the police.

So I felt very happy when I found the remainder of a bottle of benzonatate left over from my bout of pneumonia late last spring. Benzonatate is a cough medicine in pill form - it looks like a teeny-tiny little Vitamin E capsule. I have the 200mg dosage, which the emergency room doctor prescribed three times a day. And I have to say, this stuff ROCKS on coughs. It does something like numbing your throat, taking away the "itchy" feeling, that relentless tickle that can send me (and my mom, I got this from her; we could be state fair coughing champions) into spasms of coughing that can result in unpleasant episodes of bladder weakness. I'm just saying. That's why, at the top of my daily chore list, the first item is always

1. KEGEL

Anyway. About the benzonatate. There's a little sticker on the side of my bottle that says, "May cause drowsiness. Do not drink alcoholic beverages while taking this medication. Do not operate heavy machinery." And you know what? They REALLY MEAN IT. I took my second pill of the day about five hours ago and I am in no condition to drive a car. To be honest, I am in no condition to be operating this computer. You should see all the typing mistakes I've had to correct! If you could read that last sentence the way I originally typed it, it would look like this.

Ypi shoyud see akk the typimb mostakes Iv'e' had tp cprrecy!

Here's what I'm thinking (oh my gosh I just typed an L instead of a colon FOUR TIMES just then): (aha, I finally got the bugger):

If a cough medicine works, but it hammers you to the extent that when you go out to the kitchen and try to make dinner and find yourself inspecting individual dried bread crumbs in the stuffing mix to see if they sparkle, maybe the manufacturers need to bring it down a notch or fifty. Or maybe I'd be better off with the 100mg prescription. Because, wow. WOW. I have been utterly worthless today. I haven't been coughing, but I have been really, really high. And drowsy. And all of this without the pleasant euphoria bestowed upon me by my dentist. Wait. That came out wrong. The euphoria was bestowed by the prescription for Vicodin that my dentist gave me after he took out my lower wisdom teeth. I really, really loved that pleasant euphoria.

Oh, it is just too hard to type. Too hard! I'm going to see if I can crawl up the stairs to my bed and sleep, non-coughingly, until morning.