Healthy Gossip

 

By Rick Boettger

 

I have to interrupt your perfect-weather Keys Disease harmony with another health report detailing tragic deaths, stupid decisions, blood, and overmedication, important lessons I will entice you to learn with the promise of a Little Story concerning the relation of a prominent local Conch to a frisky local columnist.

 

 

We left my dear Tinkerbell happily recovering from her cold/flu due to a timely intervention with Dean Walters’ magical immunity pills. My goodness, that was the scariest “send” I ever submitted–and I have sent some damn scary columns in my time–because I said I hadn’t gotten sick in the five years since I got hooked on Dean’s “Defend and Resist” concoction. I mean, the whole world expects me to get Ebola and drop dead the next week, right?

 

 

Hooray! No, that didn’t happen. But Tink and I, happy in her recovery, stopped taking the immune-system-boosting herbs, secure in our victory.

 

 

THAT was the big mistake. Her cough lingered, no big deal, we both have allergies with bouts of couch and sneezes that pass harmlessly. But after a few days I woke at 4:30 with massive coughing that I knew was NOT an allergy cough. Damn, I had caught her cold! My hubris in telling the world “I don’t get sick” was getting punished the day the paper hit the stands.

 

 

But no, score another win for hubris. I got up, took my pills, and went back to sleep. Woke up fresh as a daisy, or perhaps elderberry, one of the herbs. I went back to the four-times-a-day, and all was well with me, though Cynthia’s hack wouldn’t go away. I had another episode, when I found myself at my office before Chorale practice, not having had my pills in 12 hours. I felt my forehead. I had a mild fever. And I had that feeling that I, who had been a sickly child, recognize immediately: I’m coming down with something.

 

 

Fortunately, I had brought my last stash of herbals with me to show my office friends. What I am going to tell you shouldn’t be true but is a simple fact. I chowed down three of the pills, and in 15 minutes the fever was gone and that sick feeling went away. I know it was touch and go because I became a bit hoarse halfway through the Chorale practice, but that too disappeared before bedtime after another dose from the home stash.

 

 

Dear Readers, I would not believe this if you wrote it to me. I have muddled about writing it, because I know it sounds kook-ish. But long ago I decided if I had to decide between truth or personal reputation, I sleep better with “truth.” For the sake of science, let us postulate that I am unusually receptive to something in this herbal supplement and it serves, at least to me, as a panacea.

 

 

Now back to Cynthia, whom I foolishly had NOT insisted keep taking the pills, since it was hard enough to get her to take them in the first place. On a Friday morning, she woke up sick. “I was totally dragged out, exhausted, didn’t want to go anywhere or do anything, just wanted to get back in bed.” She was glad she had made an appointment with her Dr. Norris, but he wasn’t available until Wednesday.

 

 

I told this to my co-workers. They said Cynthia should see someone NOW, and gave me the name of a local enterologist. They said if she’s not there, her physician’s assistant could see me. Sure enough, I was able to make a same-day appointment. He diagnosed bronchitis. While Dean’s pills had killed the initial cold with its sore throat, when she stopped taking the pills, residual germs had morphed into a bronchial infection. Hence the lingering cough.

 

 

Whew. We need a break. Time for the gossip. The Wednesday before, when Tink was still seemingly healthy enough to hit the town with me, we were approached at a Uva wine tasting by a good looking gal dragging locally prominent Conch lawyer and School Board member Bobby Highsmith. She said, “Rick, you don’t recognize me, do you! I’m Kim!”

 

 

What the hell, yes, as in Kimberly Denny aka “Bitchin’ Paradise,” the wild and always interesting writer for a couple of my favorite local papers. Cynthia said, “She always used to look so nasty, now she looks happy.” And she wasn’t so skinny, which wouldn’t have gone well with Bobby, who has slimmed some—maybe he passed it to her. Of course, they are the talk of Conch town—they are engaged to be married.

 

 

Back to the rough stuff. Cynthia saw the P.A. the same day. Accurately diagnosed the bronchitis, prescribed three drugs and an x-ray. We went to Diagnostics on Duck for the x-ray and then picked up the pills. Brought her home.

 

 

At 6:30, her temperature was 101.1. Started the pills, including aspirin. At 6:45, temp 101.3. At 7:00, 101.6. At 7:15, 101.9. PANIC TIME. Tragic background is that a dear Garden Club friend died recently at 63. She had the cold, worsened to pneumonia, which masked a metastasis, which, when they diagnosed it, said she had a week to live, and she died about then. She designed our sunken garden. She prescribed the fertilizers that saved our dwarf Canary Island date palm. Everyone at the Garden Club is now terribly scared whenever anyone gets a cold.

 

 

So we over-reacted. We called the answering service that got the P.A at home. He gave us a prescription for an antibiotic that, as much as we both hate antibiotics, we pumped into feverish Cynthia without a thought. Great news! The fever receded. Bad news. Two days later blood was coming out of her where you do not want me to be explicit.

 

 

This time to Urgent Care on the boulevard. Dr. Don Dixon said the antibiotic was useless and ripped up your gut, causing bleeding. And stop taking the aspirin, take Tylenol instead.

 

 

I feel so stupid. I’ve written before of Hospitalitis, where they give you every damn medication until the medicine becomes the problem. We had done it to ourselves. All she has to do is stop the antibiotic and aspirin, and let the other stuff kill the bronchitis.

 

 

Lesson: keep taking the harmless herbs until the sickness is ALL gone away. Do NOT do a Hospital to yourself, taking every possible prescription drug they allow you to take. You are your own doctor. Read the side effects. Google it. Be as vigilant yourself as you want your healthcare providers to be. Now, back to our beautiful weather.

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