OTC and Me

Three points you need to know before I start this rant:

1. I’m sick with a really bad cold
2. I’m post Kidney Transplant
3. When you’re post Kidney Transplant, you can’t take ANYTHING over the counter outside of Tylenol and Benadryl

Most of the time, I’m cool with that. Thankfully, knock on wood, I still seem to have a decent immune system in spite of the high dose of immunosuppressants I’m on. 

Until this fall, when I ended up in the hospital for possible Sepsis because of a fucking UTI. And now when I have the Head Cold straight from Satan himself. 

It’s been a goddamn week of snot the color of gak and coughing so hard my cat is afraid to sleep in the bed with me. Countless night waking up gagging and coughing. It’s spread to my eyes. My nose is swollen. I’m more of a mess than usual.

Unable to take mouth breathing another second, I cried “damn these med restrictions!”, ran to Target, and stocked up on the good stuff.

Now that I’m home, I’m afraid to take them.

This calls back to the whole “nobody prepares you for the Chronic part of your condition” and my general life long struggle of “what is normal”, but I didn’t realize how things like being able to go to the store and buy something for symptom relief can be taken for granted. 

Now, trust, I did my research on these active ingredients. I called my nurse. The likelihood of my kidneys exploding overnight is very slim. I’m lucky that I don’t have any additional diagnoses to contend with. That being said, it still really sucks to have to balance feeling better “now” with whatever damage the relief might cause in the future. We’re talking about trivial stuff like cough relief that should just be able to be dealt with.

For the record, I took the Nyquil. It was magical. I could breathe and sleep at the same time. No obvious organ explosions as of yet.

This cold and flu season, take a moment and be appreciative that you can just grab stuff from the pharmacy without any real concern to treat what ails you. And, you know… don’t cough in my face, ya nasty.