Sick Call

It's been a rough few days, Near Philadelphia. The malady of my last post persisted through the weekend, keeping me at home all of Sunday. Monday I came to work and coughed and coughed and coughed. That afternoon, at Sharon's suggestion, I went over to the pharmacy for a new vaporizer. While I was there, I had a chat with the pharmacist. I told him that last winter when I'd had a cough that was of the tickle-in-the-throat type, his colleague had recommended a specific product, and it had really hit the spot. It wasn't doing the job this time around, however. "Tell me about your cough," said the pharmacist. I told him it was from way deep down somewhere between the chest and the abdomen.

He walked me down the "cough and cold" aisle and stopped in front of a different product. "This is what you need for this kind of cough," he told me. There was one option that was liquid and relatively inexpensive; the other was a great big "horse pill" that cost more and, he said, would "pack a wallop." The wallop was the solution. I took the first one that night (they last twelve hours) and began to improve right away.

Stayed home from school yesterday and today I'm not exactly back to normal, but so much improved that I can comfortably be part of society. So I'm here to sing the praises of pharmacists -- they seem to me to be cut out of the same kind of cloth as librarians -- all about helping people to find the right thing.

On another front, Bodacious has been ill as well, and his situation is less easily (and less inexpensively) resolved. He started on Sunday afternoon to get into a peculiar position and kind of "freeze." Then there would be a vocalization of discomfort. He seemed to be cold and unhappy. We found a soft warm blanket. He couldn't get comfortable. Nothing was happening in his litter box. First thing Monday morning, Joe called the vet and got an appointment. Bo had something blocking the tip end of his urethra. He needed sedation, catheterization, and hospitalization. We learned that this condition, if not treated promptly, causes uremic poisoning and can lead to a painful death.

Bo came home from hospital today at lunch time, and Joe says he's on three different medications and a new diet. But vastly improved. Both Joe and I are going away this coming weekend (More About Which Later), and ordinarily we'd leave Bodacious home with a generous portion of Deli-Cat. We've decided the right thing this time is to board him at the vet's, just to be on the safe side, so soon after this problem.