Foolhardy

When I get a throat infection, in a day or two it takes the form of a more severe nose infection, aka. cold. Under normal(???) circumstances I would take a course of antibiotic and be done with it in 2-3 days.

This time, though, I went a little overboard with my curiosity & experimentation. At the hint of throat infection (I have NO idea where I picked it up from!) I started household remedy: hot milk + turmeric + honey. For two continuous days I consumed the above formula multiple times a day, which almost cured the throat infection. Wonderful! But what I totally sidelined was the fact that the infection had already branched into cold and took a solid enough ground in my body. Yet, I thought, "meh... do I really need antibiotic to combat this? I am sure it will heal without it, throat infection did!". And before I knew, within following 2 days I was totally bed-ridden with cold.

For last 3 nights, the ritual has been:

0. attempt to go to sleep at night
1. keep dry-coughing every minute until I can't take it any more
And every one of those coughs send out deadening impulses to neurons in my brain which then makes me feel like the brain is going to explode like a grenade the very instant :( And it (the bacteria/infection/whatever) has a nice annoying trick up its sleeve: you can't have just one cough at a time, you need to have burst of coughs!
2. get up, make a cup of steaming hot milk (with turmeric + honey) and wash it down that darn throat
3. Repeat: goto step 0
   

Until I don't know when I fell asleep!

I hate (maybe I'm even scared!) going to doctors here, in US of A. For the state I was in, I'm more than sure it would have been more than a day's worth of ordeal: unbearable wait time, umpteen tests, then some more wait time and I'm sure I would have had to undergo myriad of body tests (including, I suspect, the much dreaded colonoscopy! Of course it has NOTHING to do with throat infection, that is the whole point!).

So finally, yesterday night I caved in when my brother, whom I call 1/4th of a doctor because he is a Dentist :-P, vented almost full steam at my nonsense audacity :) I then took the strong dose of antibiotic I keep stocked, Azithromycin, it helps combat certain upper respiratory infections.

I'm a little better today, in the sense that I could get up, take shower, eat breakfast, drive to office and churn out some code, all in one shot without a single shut-eye in between! The coughing hasn't stopped yet, but I'm hoping it would by tomorrow. It better stop by tomorrow, because as much of a pain as it is, it is HIGHLY annoying and distracting :'(