Michael S. Pascua The Life of a Freelancer

The best medicine?

I’ve been sick for a week now. Right after getting my upper right molar removed, I caught whatever cough/cold my mother had the day before. While I was reeling in pain, mouth bleeding, having to replace gauze and drinking Slim Fast to make sure I had meals, I started to hack up phlegm. I wasn’t able to take “Generiquil” at nights until two days ago because I was taking ibuprophen for the pain from my mouth.

Eric is under the impression that I have an upper respiratory infection. I’m still not sure because I didn’t have a runny nose this whole time. It’s ironic because Eric apparently caught this “upper respiratory infection” from another source (thankfully not from yours truly) and also is only hacking up phlegm.

There were years that I was sick and I thought: maybe I’ll take a lot of vitamins. This year I decided mostly that I would just drink a lot of water and hope to pee out my colds. I still felt sick, but now I had the bladder of a 70-year-old man.

One thing that truly made me feel better was any form of humor. Whether it being Kathy Griffin dressing up as Kate Gosselin, that video of the stuttering football player on CollegeHumor, or pictures of true Fail, I didn’t care if I was hacking up phlegm as I was watching. The laughter made me feel better about my situation. It didn’t matter that when I laughed (or even smirked) it hurt my jaw for a little bit. Or I laughed so hard it made me want to pee.

My head isn’t hurting as much, my muscles don’t feel as bad, but I’m still hacking up phlegm. I thank my slightly faster recovery due to the fact that I was laughing hysterically at silly cats that hate water.