The Pregnant Wife Donkey and Her One True Love Survive a Bad Cough

Saturday at the mall I felt sick. It's the mall food- as Mr. Curry said. It's the beef and grease, I replied glumly. We let the kids all get enormous freckled jawbreakers and headed out of the three storied consumer feast and back into our small and very hot jeepy. I call it a jeepy because it's not a jeep but so closely resembles a jeep- to me, someone who knows negative nothing about cars. On the way down the moving staircase ( I'm about 5, so I call it a moving staircase, and I'm about 15, so I always think of that scene in Mallrats where the guy is obsessed with the story of the kid getting his foot caught in the staircase and reams out a Mom letting her son goof off ) I decide it's not the mall food or just too much beef, it's an anxiety attack. It's too much goddamn stuff, I say. It's freaking me out- there are too many people and too much stuff. This is the kind of spiritual conniving I come up with when I am not having a profound moment of realization about American culture but instead am coming down with a wicked cough.

By Monday I was coughing. By Monday night I settled in with a wad of toilet paper in my undies and pillows supporting the upright position to achieve exactly three hours of sleep on the family couch. Tuesday I skipped work- a painful decision considering our finances right now, with our roomate moving out and Dakota's testing this month- and went to the doctor. Well, he said, raising his very groomed eyebrow after assessing my symptoms, are you coughing up green stuff? Yes. So it's a sinus infection. Here's a prescription, feel better. I immediately have a guilt attack. With Dakota and Lola I did not use antibiotics once during the entirity of the incubation. Ever has a sorry track record:

In her third month ( where she was still making feet- TOES, for God's sake ) I had a painful tooth pulled which developed a severe infection. Antibiotics.

In her fifth month I developed a UTI ( most commonly occuring from very aggressive sex, my gynocologist once told me- I think he was just jealous ) and spent a day on the toilet playing Scrabble with Lola before giving in- Antibiotics.

In her sixth month I had a bacterial infection and yes, once again, Antibiotics.

So here we are in the last few weeks of her sixth month and I am, once again, on drugs.

I take the antibiotics, and go to work Wednesday. Wednesday night, another night of desperate attempts at breathing salt filled steam and gargling and forcing Mr. Curry to go to bed- with Lola- so that I can not worry about him worrying about me and just be miserable, and Wednesday at work I call the doctor. Wait one more day, he says. Wednesday night I am miserable on top of miserable. By 9pm I am getting a grip Maggie and forcing Mr. Curry to again go to bed. In the kitchen I start coughing so hard I vomit in the sink and have pulled small muscles in my front and back ribs. Sharp, mean pains shoot through my boobs and chest when I cough, which is once every three minutes, and lasts about a minute each cough. My head throbs, my face is swollen, my legs are swollen, and my throat is killing me.

Mr. Curry comes in and holds me close. I am ridiculous, I say, snot on my face- trying to be funny but not sure if I can have a sense of humor about this. Yes, you are, he says, smoothing back my hair, and beautiful, and I love you, and this will be over soon. I try to answer but begin coughing so hard Mr. Curry insists on picking me up and carrying me to the toilet. I protest but he swings me up, hee hawing and hacking, and carries me through the hall. My coughing turns deeper and harder and I panic: I am going to pee on you honey! I shriek-cough, put me down! He swings my legs to the side for a better grip and something goes flying through the air. My pee pad! I yell, completely horrified, My wet pee pad fell out! Mr. Curry begins laughing so hard he almost drops me. I begin laughing so hard I do pee a little. We barely make it to the toilet in time.

Today I worked a half day and went back to the doctor, handed them my 30$ copay to be told, Um...you are sick. Like, really sick. Wow. That really sucks, to be THAT sick when you are pregnant. I hope you feel better. Let me wash my hands.

I dragged Lola to the pharmacy and to grab a salad and dumped myself on the couch at home, breaking into whinnying sobs against Mr. Curry's side. Hee haw, I'm so sick honey, hee haw, I can't take this anymore.

I am preparing myself for what is surely a virus, I was now told, but still- keep taking the Amoxicillan, because often these viruses turn into bacterial infections. And hey, get some sleep.

Hee haw.