Man. The prednizone I'm on has got me super twitchy and feeling a bit aggressive. I feel like I'm on speed or something, and one of my kidneys aches.

So, I've had this chest cold for a week now, and it really hasn't been getting any better. Yesterday the crap I was coughing up changed color to yellow, and I ended up blowing a bunch of green crap with blood flecks in it out of my nose.

That wasn't the worst, though. I've been having *really* tough times breathing. I'd be fine, and then I'd have to cough up some phlegm, and the simple act of coughing up the stuff would trigger *something* where I just wasn't able to breathe for crap.

Last night I freaked out. I freaked out *bad* and had a panic attack because I wasn't breathing well, and the more scared I got, the worse my breathing got, and then the more scared I got. . .

I almost blacked out it was so bad.

I've had problems breathing before. Like, really bad problems. Collapsed lung, sucking chest wound type problems. And I felt the fear then, and it sucked. It was a fear about being in pain. I knew I would survive but that it would suck for a while.

But this fear - the one I had last night - it was so much worse. I literally felt like I was going to die. There was not going to be an "alright"; there was going to be a gasping for air followed by blacking out and eventual death.

Maynard calmed me down from the panic attack, and I ended up drinking some coffee (as caffeine helps to open bronchial passages). I even unlocked the door to my apartment in case I needed to call 911.

Seriously. Bad.

So this morning I went to the doctor. "Dude," I says, "I can't be-fuggin' breathe. Me cold is gonzo berzerko and me lungs is wheezy and not in that Jeffersons way." And he did the listen to the chest thing, and we determine that it is not a pneumothoratic episode. So he goes over to the closet and digs out this weird respirator machine with tubes that spits out a bunch of vapor and says "Toke down on this like it were Purple Kush."

So I did.

And five minutes later I seriously felt like a completely different person. One that could breathe.

Anyways. I went in to find out what was up with my cold, ended up being diagnosed with Asthma, and got sent home with five prescriptions (including antibiotics for the brand spanking new bacterial infection that the chest cold turned into).

So. . . uh. Hooray? Boo? I don't know what to think. "Yay" that maybe I'll start to feel better? "Crap" in that I have a new Kryptonite? WTF?

It seems that the cold I thought was getting better is possibly getting worse.

And I'm fresh out of mom-like houseguests to make me chicken sooop.

I am now in the throes of my third chest cold within six or seven months.

I'd say I had cancer except that I've had too many chest x-rays in recent years for that to be an option.

I am having this situation whereby my hands feel kind of numb if I close them into fists - and they don't want to curl into fists. Like, there isn't enough strength for them to close entirely, and if I force it, they feel numbish - similar to when you crack your funny bone.

Anyone know anything about this, or have experienced this before?

Yesterday, I neglected to pick up my nightey-night sleepy-juice drugs. Result: Brandon gets a mere four hours of sleep or so before the pain of an obvious lung-relapse wakes him up and keeps him up.

This is pretty high on the suck-o-meter scale, this continual health whirlwind I've been subjected to for the past couple months, if one counts the crippling chest colds I had.

So, being up early, I ended up catching a broadcast of Romeo + Juliet. Well. More like "got sucked into by accident".

Every time I read or watch a version of this play, I find myself devastatingly depressed - and not because the story itself is so tragic. Rather, standing face to face with the sheer genius of the story's construction and execution from beginning to end humbles me and my meager talent with words to a degree that causes my bones to ache.

I can only imagine what watching the play would be like if one were not already intimately familiar with the plot. Here we have a lighthearted comedy - an uplifting love story - through two and a half acts.

Until the murder of Mercutio by the Prince of Cats. This is a brutal, jarring event - one that is completely unexpected and yet completely telegraphed from scene one via Tybalt's irrational rage. And here is where the wheels come off and we find ourselves Bat Country. A chain of events set in motion that can only culminate in, well. You know. The deaths of our titular characters.

What a brilliant sucker punch.

And I fall for it every. time.

In other news, I think I need to pick up a copy of Guitar Hero III after playing it at JD's birthday party last night.

Results: Not gonna die; pretty much exactly what I expected.

So now I'm in a shit-ton of pain and bored out of my skull but I don't really care because, you know, Vicodin.

Fastest. X-Rays. Ever.

Drive time: 10 minutes.
Parking time: 5 minutes.
Finding the right place in the hospital time: 1 minute.
Wait time for registration: 3 minutes.
Registration: 4 minutes.
Wait time to be brought back after registration: 0 minutes.
Wait time for x-rays after that: 2 minutes.
Time for X-rays: 1 minute.

And parking cost all of a dollar.

Are cats supposed to groom each other?

I'm watching Clementine give Simon a bath. And it's freaking me out. I can't figure if she's doing some sort of weird submissive cat thing or Simon got a bunch of catnip spilled on his head.

Also, I have the attention span of a smothered dolphin.

Also, Chelsea Handler is one of the funniest people I've had the pleasure to observe in years.

Anyways.

The lung thing happened about, oh, half an hour before the kick-off yesterday. Since I wasn't sure if I hadn't simply pulled a muscle carrying a big tub of ice or not, I swallowed a fistful of Ibuprofin, three or four beers, and some excellent Italian meatballs and watched the game.

I realize that fully 90% of the people I know are "football stupid" but I'm gonna talk about it anyway for a minute:

Which was kind of boring for the first half - but this was too be expected (coaches are always more conservative about offense in bowl and playoff games). However, the second half was just excellent. In fact, the last 5 minutes were better than Superbowl LXI's entire broadcast (which was like watching two sucky high school teams play).

I thought both teams played well, and the last play (you know, the fourth quarter one pulled off with 1 second on the clock) was very classy.

Anyways.

Dinosaur Comics makes me laugh my ass off. Which is kind of painful right now.

Oh, yeah: Ms. Kbk is giving me a ride tomorrow.

El Doktor sayeth that the lung has indeed collapsed. He gave me some vicodin.

Then he wrote me a prescription for an *x-ray* - which I didn't even know you could get prescriptions for. And I have to get to a hospital tomorrow morning (somehow, what with the vicodin and massive pain) and get the pictures taken - which, apparently, only takes like, ten minutes if you have a prescription.

Unless, of course, it gets worse tonight. Then I am supposed to go to the ER ASAP.

Or, I suppose, die. Which is always an option.

My apartment is very, very clean.

I have a crew of ladies here cleaning the apartment but I don't know if they'll be done by the time I have to leave for my doctor's appointment, which is, like, in an hour.

Edit: Rescued. Maynard is coming over.

So, I'm fairly certain that I've collapsed a lung.

Where "fairly certain" means, "I can feel it moving around inside my chest cavity, and my right side feels like someone took at it with a ball bat."

However, I'm not having any difficulty breathing.

This means that, true to my West Virginian nature, I'm going to "power through it."

I'm guessing I've had more stress in the past couple weeks than I thought.

I've been feeling flu-ish. Again. So I sleep alot. I'm mentally lethargic. Directionless. Not eating well, with odd muscle aches and sinus headaches. My sleeping pills seem to be having less effect, my pulse is threading, my hands are itching.

So maybe I am getting sick. Again.

Or, or course, I could just be depressed. That works, too.

I've been re-reading a bunch of books that I enjoyed maybe 25 years ago. Stuff like the Dragonlance chronicles - total pap, brain candy I can devour. I have a stack of "serious" books (like Papillon) but I can't summon the mental energy to focus on them.

Maynard, subtly_modded, and I are trying to get a "real" game night running again with a couple other people. It remains to be seen, however, how well this will turn out.

Today I started watching Journeyman episodes. I'm only two episodes into it and I am enjoying it.

Journeyman is kind of like Quantum Leap with Lucius Vorenus playing the part of the "leaper".

And by "kind of like" I mean "exactly like", at least as far as plot points and the theme: Dude ends up zipping around in time randomly, intersecting with the life of a single person in order to alter their destiny. Where it departs (so far) is that our ex-Roman Centurion leaps to several points in time per episode, always leaps as himself, and there's a disturbing lack of Dean Stockwell (though it has a much better soundtrack).

Those aren't necessarily bad things; I just also happen to be watching all of the old Quantum Leap episodes on DVD at the same time. So the comparisons are pretty solid right now.

My only other nitpick is that the show takes place in San Francisco. Those who live here will know why this is a nitpick: it's filled with wonderful inaccuracies regarding the city (like rain showers in the summer, or houses with large lawns).

I just *got* over this chest cold last week. Please don't tell me it's coming back.

Totally stir-crazy and bored because I'm trapped in this house, too sick to go anywhere.

subtly_modded came over this morning and dropped off some food and stuff for me, which was nice, though.

Christ, I don't think I've been this wiped out by anything in almost ten years.

I am just plain wrecked today. Yesterday I woke up feeling horrid (read: hung over), and it just kept getting worse throughout the day. This was a problem because I had people over all day long, so playing host while also being made of mashed potatoes was a suck.

Coffee helped, but I had this really bad dry cough for some reason, and by the end of the evening my throat was really sore from the coughing. No real mucous or anything, but nasty.

Now, I think I'm like, "sick." I'm really feeling wretched today, my throat is still sore, I still have a cough (a bit wetter). Fluish type stuff.

I could also be exhausted; I didn't sleep for fuck all last night. I kept having weird dreams that were the cross between Portal and A Few Good Men. And that doesn't sound like it works, but it did.