So I’ve been feeling pretty crumby for the past few days. I assumed that it was just a tiny cold paired with some pretty wicked allergies and that it would pass. I was so wrong.

Now the entire family is sick with bronchitis, and our doctors are telling us that this is generally caused by allergies, which we knew I had in abundance, but apparently now the kids are allergic to Autumn as well. I was wondering if they had them, considering that Jonas is hacking away and Maggie has broken out in hives three times in a week. The dark circles ringing my kid’s eyes were a bit of a tip off as well.

So now, the kids are going to be on Zyrtec. I, on the other hand, presented with much more serious bronchitis (as in, “um, ma’am, I’m not getting breath sounds in your lower lobes”). They gave me a lovely breathing treatment (oh how I adore steroids, more, more albuterol please. I live to feel my heart race, my hands shake and my brain go haywire!) Then they sent me home with three prescriptions.

I’m digging the cough expectorant, which is supposed to make me drowsy. Anything suggesting drowsiness should be re-labeled “will hit you with enough tranquilizer to fell a fully grown rhinoceros” because people, I can promise you I will be sleeping after this. The other one was a simple antibiotic; those always upset my stomach, so now I’ll be uncomfortable, but I won’t care because I’ll be sleeping. The final medication is an inhaler full of more albuterol. I get to take this five times a day to open up my lungs. This means that I will now be jittery while sleeping and nauseous. If you are wondering if one can be both asleep and jittery at the same time, yes, OH YES, you can. You just get a lot of involuntary muscle spasms and wake up every two minutes.

The best thing about the entire cocktail has got to be the instructions for the inhaler that stated to avoid spraying the inhaler into your eyes. I know they were thinking of me when they wrote that.

May I please put in a request to feel better? This is nearly five months straight of completely crappy health, and even though I’ve already totally given up on 2007 as far as bringing anything good, I wouldn’t mind riding out the remainder of the year in peace.