The Cough Heard ‘Round the World

It was a weekend of coughing and working and coughing and cleaning and then more coughing.

Thankfully, I am the only one in the family that got the cough.  For some unknown reason the cold we had last week went into my lungs.  Ugh!  I spent Friday night trying to sleep sitting up in my recliner.  If I lie down I start to cough so much that I can’t sleep at all, so the sleeping options aren’t good.

Saturday night James decided to get me some NyQuil to help me stop coughing so I could sleep.  Having never taken anything like that before I was skeptical about how I would feel on it.  Would I be in a near coma that would last for 24 hours?  Would I have some kind of bizarre opposite effect and get wired with shaky legs and unusual heartbeats?  Or would it do nothing, thus leaving me with another sleepless night in the recliner?

But I took it and let me tell ya….it was weird.  I felt like my limbs were filled with lead and I could NOT make myself wake up.  Sometime during the night Levi needed to go to the bathroom.  This rarely happens and when it did, I was completely out of it.  It was 2:00 AM and in my sleep I heard a distant sound of a child calling out to me.  My brain tried to wake me up, but my body wouldn’t let me.  I finally got up (probably after 10 seconds but it seemed like an hour) and helped him to the potty.  Now here’s where I tell you something very personal about myself.  I sleep in just a big t-shirt and underwear.  I wear pajama pants around the house until the moment I slip into bed when I take the pants off and lie them at the foot of the bed.  That way if a child needs me I can hurry and get my pants back on so they don’t accidentally see me half naked in the middle of the night, thus damaging them for life.

But this night I was in such a NyQuil induced stupor that I didn’t think to put the pajama pants on.  Levi came out of the bathroom where I was waiting to tuck him back into bed and he threw his hands over his eyes and shouted, “Mommy!  Please put some pants on!!” like his eyes were burning from seeing my legs.

I just smiled and told him to just go back to bed and try not to think about it.  He walked all the way to his bed with his eyes covered.  He’s 4.  How shocking could it be?  I mean, I was covered to my middle thigh.  Has he given any thought to the fact that I look at his complete nakedness every day when he changes clothes?  He parades around like he’s the most adorable naked person ever to prance in front of me but when he sees my bare knees it’s an affront to his sensitive nature?

After getting Levi back to bed I dropped right into sleep.  That was the best part of the effect of the NyQuil.  Normally after an episode like that I would be awake for hours.  Anytime I wake up in the night I am up for at least an hour before I can fall back to sleep.  But thanks to the gift of cold medicine I was back to sleep in seconds and slept like a baby until morning.

The cough seems to be getting better today.  I can talk without going into an embarrassing fit of hacking that makes everyone in the house wish I would go hide myself until this disease passes.  No one enjoys watching me try to cover my mouth while I press on my belly (which is sore from the coughing) and do my best to stop coughing and not pee on myself all at the same time.

It’s not attractive.

Plus I wore the same pajamas all weekend which adds to the appeal.

But today I am up and showered and ready to take on the day.  The coughing is a little better and I think I can function at a full 45%.

The boys have been looking forward to today for a while.  They’ve been planning an outing with Mom and I am going to try to go despite still being half sick.  So after school and lunch the five of us (me, Noah, Adam, Elijah and Levi) will go out together.  I shall be cheerful, I shall not allow my cough to ruin the day and best of all…..I shall get fully dressed.

Have a great week!