State of health 2

Right now I’m feeling, well, messy. On Thursday I was given some tablets to help alleviate my sinus problems. They’re a combination of pseudoephedrine and an antihistamine. Initially the chemist didn’t give me enough pills so I had to get some more. I’ve also been given a new nasal spray. I realised yesterday evening that amongst all this I’d missed two doses of Citalopram (my antidepressant) in a row, and I started feeling dizzy. I didn’t sleep well last night or the night before; insomnia is listed as a common side effect of pseudoephedrine. Plus I still have sinus headaches and I’m coughing up thick phlegm, sometimes colourless, sometimes yellow, sometimes brown, sometimes lumpy and sometimes even hard and crusty, like the stuff that sticks to the sides of my nose all the damn time. A lot of the time I struggle to breathe out of my left nostril.

I explained my problems at my appointment with an allergist on Thursday morning, the best I could in Romanian. She was very nice and seemed quite impressed with how much of the local language I could speak. I said that I’d had problems in that area ever since I got pneumonia and whooping cough when I was six. She squirted twenty droplets of liquid on my forearm to test for allergies such as dog and cat hair and various types of pollen. They all came up negative with the exception of mould (mucegai in Romanian). I was given a list of tips and tricks for dealing with a mould allergy. After two weeks of taking the medication she prescribed me, I’ll see her again, and I’ll likely get to visit an ear, nose and throat specialist and a pulmonary specialist. I don’t know whether my insurance will pay for this – I guess you could call thirty years a pre-existing condition. I’m very glad to be finally getting it seriously looked at. For so long all the mental health stuff took precedence I just hope they don’t dig up anything sinister as Mum put it; I read some horror stories last night about younger non-smokers with lung cancer.

I did 12½ hours of teaching last week, my biggest week yet, and I expect to do the same this week. With none of the pressure to be somebody else that I’m used to feeling at work, teaching hardly feels like work at all. I’ve now bought a Romanian domain name and am trying to put a site together using WordPress (which I also use for this blog) to help promote my lessons, in particular those on Skype. I’ve created a logo that incorporates my initials and have chosen a colour scheme (yellow, not too bright but not too insipid either) but haven’t yet found a suitable WordPress theme for the simple site that I’m aiming for. Having this new laptop certainly helps though.

Apart from my health issues (a big exception, I know) I’m feeling pretty damn good about things. Sometimes lately I’ve been scarcely able to believe how happy I am.