This is officially week two of this dag blasted cold. Fortunately, it’s easing up. Though I’m still coughing I’m no longer coughing up a lung. My abdominal muscles are relieved as well as are my internal organs which I am sure will suffer post traumatic stress syndrome when this thing finally clears up.

That said, I was not the only one affected by this horrible thing. I have now heard many others have been afflicted, some are going into week three and have started the regimen I began, z-packs, inhalers, and for some, prescription cough syrup. Oh the horrors.

As if I didn’t have enough to deal with, for whatever reason my body began retaining water. I don’t know if the cold had something to do with this. So, adding insult to injury, not only was I coughing up lungs and blowing my nostrils from here to kingdom come, I had to also suffer with powerful diuretics that are capable of sucking my brains through my . . .  to prevent something like blown out kidneys or pneumonia.

As a side note, again to add insult to injury, on one glorious morning I decided to make coffee for comfort. I wish I hadn’t. I decided to open and play with a new coffee maker — won’t mention the brand — which promised to have coffee in my cup in three minutes. Trust, it will certainly have coffee in your cup within three minutes but you must be careful. You see, this thing has an internal burner which stays on. The button to turn the internal burner off is called a “vacation button.” I assume that means one would turn the blasted thing off while on vacation so as not to burn the darn house down.

Well, I turned on the vacation button and ground my coffee. Unfortunately, I forgot to put the fresh ground coffee in the basket and poured the water into the machine first. Within seconds the water poured through the basket and in to the pot and silly me, I immediately removed the basket and that’s when the fun began. I have never felt such hot water in my life. Needless to say, I ended up with scalding burns on my hand. A nice touch for someone who is sick, almost dying, coughing up a lung and, with very little lung power to begin with, began screaming in pain and those  screams of pain were pathetic at best.  I couldn’t laugh behind it all because I was much to busy screaming, coughing, gagging and wheezing.

Oh but wait, there’s more. I did what I was supposed to do: hold hand in cold water for 20 minutes. Did that. But, right outside my front door are two huge aloe vera plants that are there for such occasions and of course, I forgot they were there. Can you say ugly scar across my hand now? I will blame my stupidity on being sick. I must. Really, I must.

Okay, now that you know how much pain and suffering I have endured these past few weeks — pelvis pain for two and cold/flu for two — on with the show.

While in sick bay I did have an opportunity to talk with a few folks, catch up on some reading, finally organized my iTunes and music, listened to a few podcasts and — the real excitement of my days — listened and watched Leo Laporte at CES 2010. I was really impressed with Leo’s (TWiT TV) report from the floor of CES. I was not so much impressed because he was there, I was impressed with the setup he used while there. The media is truly in our hands and how exciting that was for me. Of course ideas went swoon in my stuffy head and at some point when the stuffiness clears I will put pen to paper to address those ideas. I feel like giving birth to something.

On the topic of health and alternative medicine, I had some very interesting discussions with folks on lupus, underlying psychological causes, how it’s a stress disorder, etc. I even heard something quite interesting about cancer. The question I came away with after these discussions and/or conversations is are we all harboring some form of fear, resentment, anger, unsolved problems from our childhood? It’s something to pursue for honesty’s sake. Why? Well, I know we are all taught to love blaming everything and everyone else for our ills sans ourselves but, in terms of being healthy, maybe we need to look at our lives and learn to forgive mom, dad, sick uncle Louie, etc. I’m just saying.

I broached the above subject with a friend who had a very overpowering and very critical person in her life. She has not been able to forgive this person and the person is long gone, dead, deader than a doorknob, probably bone and dust right now and still there is bitterness, anger, etc. When she is affected by something totally unrelated in her life, it invariably gets tied back to that glob within of bitterness and anger and her flares go hog wild. Might be something to it. I’m just saying.  She has taken my theory under advisement.

I will probably talk more on this later. Right now, I need to blow, cough, sneeze, rinse and repeat. Until then.