Please Pass the Salt

January

07

Vacation uniform (a.k.a. pajamas)

The last two days I’ve donned my “vacation uniform” as an encore to my 10 day Christmas break, because I should take it easy—what with my bleeding lungs and all.

They are still bleeding a bit. I wonder how long this takes to stop for most people with CF? It’s been nearly 48 hours since it started. Granted, this time it was mouthful after mouthful of liquidy blood rather than a single one, so maybe it will take longer to stop. In the past it has stopped within 24-36 hours.

In times like this, I’d like to be able to press fast-forward until the bleeding is completely gone. Instead, I’ve noticed my instinct is to attempt the next best thing: sleep until it simply goes away.

Only the problem is I can’t sleep anymore. Thursday night (or rather early Friday morning), this was easy to accomplish with my hydrocodone cough syrup. I just medicated myself around the clock to keep from coughing and it helped a lot as far as the bleeding slowing down, me passing the time without memory because I was sleeping and then there’s the added bonus of so much fabulous sleep.

I spent all day yesterday mostly sleeping with an occasional wakeful few hours reading and eating. Then back to bed for an early night. But then today, I seemed to max out my sleeping quota by 9 a.m. and noticed my cough syrup supply dwindling. Since I’m still coughing up a bit of blood in my mucus this evening (been the same all day), I figured the prudent thing is to preserve my stash for at night when I’m asleep when I really need to control my coughing but can’t consciously do so.

It’s hard to not cough when there is so much in your lungs you need to clear out, especially when the action is so subconscious because you do daily, hourly for your whole life.

I hope the last bits of blood go away soon. The weather was so perfect today (low 70s and sunny) and I hate that I can’t go out and exercise in it. (I’m assuming I shouldn’t since I’m supposed to avoid coughing and exercising generally causes that for me.)

On the plus side, I’ve read nearly 1300 pages of a 1500 page book. I am no great reader and this is by far the most pages I’ve read in a single book. My motivation is that it’s book #5 in a 7-part series and it’s the ONLY one not available as an unabridged audiobook. How cruel is that to us slow readers? I’ve been reading it ever so slowly for about 4 months, but really kicked into high gear over Christmas break when I read the majority of it.

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