This morning, I woke up, and for the first time in a week, I didn’t cough until I was nearly choking. It was a good way to end what had to be one of the more harrowing days of my life. Funny that the simple act of coughing a lot can make you fear for your life, question your existence, and just make you want to crawl in a hole and die.
Yesterday morning I awoke to yet another of my coughing spasms. Again, I feared for my life. Perhaps I was being overdramatic, but I had never had such a coughing spasm before this past week, when I’ve had several of them. I called my doctor and tried to get in to visit, but they were totally booked. They did, however, order a chest X-ray for me, which I promptly went up and had done. They’re pretty painless these days: you throw on a robe, and you literally hug a bulky machine for one angle and hang from a bar for another angle. All in all, it took about a minute – most of my time was spent in the waiting room and trying to find the check-in counter at Evanston Hospital.
I spent the afternoon at home, playing World of Warcraft and not napping, because I knew if I laid down again, it would just bring on another spasm. The doctor’s office said they would try to get me in that afternoon, but they never called back, leaving me hanging on my fate. I trudged through a little WoW that evening, fearing the fact that I would eventually have to go to sleep. I was also becoming more and more depressed, sending messages to my friends about how sick and unhappy I was, and generally feeling completely alone. My parents were available at least, so I was able to speak to them several times during the day. Mom, being the ex-nurse, had good advice on how to deal with my coughs and such.
Inevitably, however, 11 PM came. I sat up and finished a book I was reading, then reluctantly laid down to sleep at about midnight. Not 5 minutes later, I had a return of a cough spasm, leaving me wheezing and bug-eyed. It passed, but I was left feeling spent and scared. I called my parents to tell them about it, and my mom urged me to drive to the emergency room. I was reluctant to do so, but I did. You think of an ER as a place to go when you’re having a heart attack or you’ve been shot, but my own health problems were obviously such that they needed to be tended to right away, not after a night of sleeping and a likely replay of the coughing fit.
The ER was pretty quiet for most of the night. I arrived at about 12:15, where I was checked out by a nurse and then sent to a room at about 1:00, where I waited… and waited… and waited. Turns out they were short-staffed that night, with only one doctor on site. I could hear babies crying, saw a person on a gurney outside my room with an IV, and realized there were several people who needed help too. Since I wasn’t dying, I assumed that meant I would have to wait… and wait I did. Finally someone came in at about 2 am to give me a cursory checkup, asked me about my symptoms and such, then left again. More waiting. Finally, a nurse came in with a breathing apparatus that had me breathe in some sort of atomized medication – I assume it was steroids or something of the sort. That felt like it helped to a small extent, but when the doctor finally came in, I told him I didn’t quite feel it yet. He assured me it would help with the cough and such, so I acquiesced and hoped for the best. They gave me some pills of a steroid and an inhaler – first time in my life that I’ve had one. I went home, propped up my head on some pillows so as not to lie flat, and went to sleep.
Like I said, I woke up this morning and didn’t have a coughing fit – in fact, I’m starting to feel the phlegm go away. It was a terrible, awful day – I was coughing a lot, I felt completely alone. Today is another day. I still live alone, but hopefully I will be in better spirits.
The big Patch 2.0 is dropping in WoW next week. This means free respecs for everyone, including my prot warrior. Here’s what I’ve come up with for a spec. I’m gonna miss the +5% crit that comes from Cruelty, but I’ll deal. Focused Rage should make my hate generation a bit better across the board by reducing the rage required for all my abilities; in particular, Revenge should drop to 2 rage! I skipped over Imp Sunder since I’ll only be using it enough to get 5 sunders on a target, then switching over to spam Devastate. Imp Defensive Stance and Shield Mastery will reduce my damage taken significantly – the former will be even more useful in later end-game encounters where a lot of the damage is magical in nature, not physical. And after wiping repeatedly on Huhuran the last few weeks with Djörk, I think the 2 points in Imp Shield Wall will definitely help us out a lot when every second of survivability matters. It’s just too bad Improved Disciplines is so deep in the Arms tree – that would be a very, very nice thing to have for everyone, including us Prot warriors.