You Know You Need More Sudafed When

When you're nauseous from all the phlegm draining into your stomach. Welcome to Central Texas.

The Vicious Cycle

Begin on a day with bad allergies. Take enough medicine to feel okay inside the house. Go walk around looking at christmas lights for two hours to begin the cycle

• Head hurts.
• Frown.
• Hurts worse.
• Frown more.
• Get cramps in frown muscles on forehead, hurts worse.
• Frown more.
• Hurts worse.
• Repeat.

Go home and lie down, massage forehead and relax. It will start to be less worse. A tylenol and a sleep later, it will feel better.

Forgot About the Mold :(

I felt tired all day and toward the evening I wanted to just lie down and lie down. And that was AFTER taking a nap. I had a hunch and: sure 'nuff, medium levels of mold. +1 pseudoephedrine and I'm back up to 100%. I just wish I had thought of it in time to be more fun with the Zoo today.

If they ever ban sudafed, I'm going to have to get professional treatment or relocate to El Paso or something.

Excuse Me I Have To Breathe That Air!

You can tell it's Easter time because . . . my car is pastel green! (rimshot)

The sweat I wiped off my head when I was jogging, I kid you not, was green. My white car, when viewed at a narrow angle, is green. The corners of all the streets by the curb are full of oak pollen thingies. It's bad enough I have to jog, but SRSLY I have to jog in THIS!?:



Come on trees! Can't you all get a room or something?

You Have a Wheeze In There.

Quoth my Darling Wife last night, as she lay her head on my chest. Today I feel closer to $1000 than $1,000,000. Getting that "fish out of water" feeling, actually. I need to hit up the guaifenesin/pseudoephedrine combo when I get home. That's on top of the regular Loratadine 10mg.

LB and MM sound like they have emphysema, and Company Owner #2, who refuses to take drugs, sounds like he has the flu.

Why? Because the mold count is off the chart, literally:



Tomorrow's Allergy Report looks exactly the same, with this additional note: "molds will remain high. Red Berry Juniper from the Texas Panhandle may briefly show up after cold frontal passages late this week and early next week."

The red berry juniper riding South on cold fronts is why LB sounds like he's an old, sick man. The next couple days are going to deplete my drug stores significantly. I just hope it's enough. Thank God for drugs!

Pseudoephedrine For Nausea?

I would have said no, yesterday. Today I'm not so sure. Icky biology story follows, you have been warned.

The allergies, they are bad this year. We were feeling under the weather, and that included a nasty-feeling stomach that wasn't quite bad enough to make us puke. I think it was all the phlegm from the sinus cavities, draining to the gut, and making it all funky down there.

So, pseudoephedrine dries up the goo, and the gut clears up. I'll leave the really icky details for your imagination, but it appears to be working, thank God.

The Smell Drugs of Autumn

You will recall that I just expressed my pleasure at the arrival of Autumn.

I forgot about the allergens that come with it. Time to start flirting with federal crimes buying pseudoephedrine in bulk again, I guess. Current status: I can breathe, that's not the problem today. The problem is I feel like somebody punched me in the inside of my sinuses.

I need to have a bumper sticker made up:

Austin Allergy Season:
Better Living Through Chemistry!

Sick.

I am it.

Y'all are going to have to solve the world's problems without me for a day.

Yesterday I was tired all day, really dragging. Lungs all full of junk that wouldn't come out. Last night I ran a fever with chills and then (after taking tylenol and pseudoephedrine and guaifenesin) then I started sweating out whatever it was. I'm still tired, though, and will probably miss a whole day @ work. Thanks to Jesus & my boss for sick days.

Bad News From Our Pediatrician Re: #3 :(

He's been fussy and whiny and we thought it was because he's teething. He's been sneezing and coughing and we thought it was because of the airborne allergens.

We were right.

We were also under-dosing him on acetaminophen. Poor little guy.

We were giving him a "0.8" on the dropper and he should have been getting a "1.2." I blame the drug company's lawyers and the entire American overly sue-happy judicial system, just like I blame them for not being able to get pseudoephedrine for infants in the US. It could not be my fault or my wife's for not trying to find suitable dosing for ourselves. If I remember I'll post up the chart our baby doctor gave us today. The chart on a bottle of Tylenol says 0.8ml for <2 year-olds. They removed the dose-by-weight information. Not wanting to OD a baby on something that can hurt vital organs, we were giving a dose that was too low when considered on a mg per kg basis.

Erring on the safe side with pain meds = fussy baby.

Problem (we hope) solved.

Wow, That Was Terrible!

Yesterday was a rough one due to a high mold spore count up my nose (from a front that blew in from Houston 2 days ago) and, after taking a bottle and a half of pseudoephedrine, I started feeling much better after I fell asleep for the night.

This morning the visibility in the Central Texas region is about 150 feet. Oncoming cars' lights can be seen maybe 3x that far, tops. Listening to the traffic report was like sitting through a recital of the names of the vietnam war dead, it took so long. My carpool buddy stopped counting at 10 wrecks. That would include 2 rollovers. Because it was foggy and wet. Seriously?

Oh well. More blogging today, because I'm appropriately drugged and I gots me some COFFEE!