Coronablog Six: The Medicaments Predicament

temperatures. The fits of wracking coughs have pulled and wrenched every muscle in her abdomen and chest but are finally less frequent. There’s been no question since this really got started about what it is. Sure, tests here are only available to the Seriously Ill, the health-care professional, the hospitalized, but we know our kid and we know flu and this is not flu. We’re in daily contact with the doctor, in case of complications and to keep the situation monitored, but she’s definitely out of the woods. Not that she was in the woods in the first place – but she sure was walking a path along the edge of the forest, as are all who contract this novel threat, but she never turned in and is leaving the trees behind now, if I may stretch this metaphor to its absolute breaking point.

     Now, obviously the hardest part of all this has been watching my child suffer. You know that. Everybody knows that. A whole, whole lot of people are going through that right now – and much, much worse, in that although I’ve been concerned, and worried, and consumed with sympathy, I have not actually had to be afraid for her and that cannot be said about a whole lot of people. That’s why this post isn’t about that. We can take it for granted, my husband and I have been emotionally through the wringer about our poor, miserable kid. Instead, this post is about the monumental struggle – now resolved – to keep her in cough medicine, and about the other medicational adventures, insignificant as they are in comparison, I’ve been having about my damn rib. No, you know what? I’ll just knock that latter part out now, get it out of the way – I hate tramadol. There, that’s it really; I can’t take NSAID’s anymore so the doctor has me on some tramadol to keep the pain from the sprained rib from doing things like Absolutely Preventing Sleep. It takes the edge off, but I must say, after a week of the stuff I stopped it altogether during the day, only using one now to help me sleep (I have ten left and have no intention of asking for more). It only takes the edge off, enough to let me sleep, so the constant nausea just isn’t worth it and I’ll just do without analgesics altogether. Oh well. Me and pain, we’re old friends. So what?

     Over the years I have had a couple of opportunities (for example, 9 weeks of bronchitis around 12 years ago) to thoroughly vet the cough medicines available over the counter here. It was clear from the moment my kid started with the real cough that we’d be needing the one with just a smidge of codeine in it. We had a bit on hand that hadn’t expired so we dispensed that and set about trying to get more.

     At the moment, of course, pretty much everywhere happens to be sold out of whatever specific thing you went in there for. They have heaps of all that other stuff, but the one you need? Ha!Don’t be silly. I’m sure this is true where you are as well. Thus it was that we decided on a two-tiered approach: we needed some right away, which will be the second part of this section of this account, but for starters I set out to order some. We also needed vitamins, and the battery in our thermometer was getting low. I’ve already posted about all the ins and outs that led me to find, eventually, an online drug store with everything we needed. I posted that… let’s see… eight days ago. Wow, time flies. Those supplies got here yesterday.

     What ended up happening is a testament to customer service, above-and-beyond thinking, and dedication. Neither of us relished the idea of my husband leaving a household where someone has fever and a cough, only allowed when there is no other option as it is, to explore the gamut of drug stores on the various shopping streets of our beleaguered city, hunting for one solitary brand and type of cough medicine. I volunteered to start calling around, but in an epiphany, we thought of our pharmacy first. Now, ours is a very small neighborhood pharmacy. They simply don’t have the room to stock much over-the-counter stuff at all, but they do try to make sure they always have the basics, so it was worth a shot, and it’s only three blocks away, instead of downtown or over by the main shopping drag, far from our home and crowded besides. I rang them up and the woman on the other end said regretfully that they did not have any of the one specific kind we needed. Then she said, “OH WAIT!” Yes, they had one bottle, one small bottle, after all. Reserve it for my husband to pick up? Absolutely! No problem at all! At this point we expected that online order the next day so we left it at that, and he went to get the cough syrup.

     In the morning it had become obvious that we were going to be needing a lot more cough syrup, and with a lot more certainty than that order. I rang the pharmacy again, and the woman on the other end recognized my voice immediately, volunteering before I could say anything that they expected one bottle to be delivered in a couple of hours and she would set it aside for us. Would I, she asked, like her to order another bottle as well for the next day, while also setting aside the one they would usually be getting in? YES! Yes, I would. So off he went again a while later, for 100 ml of cough medicine, which by that point we knew was enough for one day. The next day, two. Resultant communications repeated the two-bottle order again but this time, they would put into an outside locker, and send my husband the combination, so he wouldn’t even need to go inside. This he did, and two more bottles will appear there as by magic this coming Tuesday. They’re going to bill us sometime next month for it all. My pharmacy is getting one hell of a nice bouquet if we get through all this while my garden has flowers, and I guess cookies or something if it’s after that. For sure a custom mini bouquet in digital form meanwhile.

     Now, all this time we’d been getting the 100 ml bottles, but it was a 200 I had on order. We had begun to despair a bit about the online thing and they weren’t responding to customer service inquiries, so I decided to go back to the website of the one drug store that had had the cough syrup – but not the other things I had needed. They allowed me to place an order for three 100 ml bottles, to which I added some Azaron because the mosquitoes are out before the bats and dragonflies this year, and some more ibuprofen and paractetamol for all those terrible aches and pains she’s got. This is when things were starting to get pretty tense: we’ve got a three-day weekend now, not even mail delivery Monday, so we damn well needed enough cough syrup here to get through all that. And we do now – BOTH online orders arrived yesterday, just in time.
     So there you are, that’s our COVID-19 saga to date. My kid’s going to be all right. We’re 90% certain my husband’s had it too; he had a very bad cold he got from an out-of-town friend a week before the New Era kicked in, and after two weeks of that, it turned into a dry cough and body aches, which then dragged on for a couple more weeks. Do I have it? Well, actually, I do think so. For one thing, I’ve been blatantly exposed to it for at least two weeks, and if my husband had it, longer. It’s hard to tell sometimes what is and isn’t part of my chronic fatigue syndrome and lingering burnout, but the sheer bodily exhaustion that’s overcome me for the last couple of days, paired with the light dry cough that sometimes turns up, accompanying a feeling like “a bubble in my chest” which is exactly how my daughter described the few days before this kicked in in full, have me convinced I’m throwing it off as I write. I’m in a slightly elevated risk group should it go Full Blown, but I also have a pretty solid history of kicking viral ass so I’m going to go on assuming I won’t be getting seriously ill – while continuing, of course, to take all precautions.

     I wish you health and wisdom in these times. Enjoy this photo of a visitor to my garden, and be well, my friends. Stay safe.