Mommy can’t yell. Her throat’s too sore.

Seriously, am I really doing back-to-back posts on sickness? Is this what this blog has become?

Well, yes. Sickness is all around us these days, as we talked about the other day. Except this is the kind of sickness that is moving past the runny-nose/sneezing grossness, and into the long-term, is-it-ever-going-to-go-away variety of illin’.

(SIDENOTE: D is also illin’ because he’s lost one of his tubes, and won’t get another surgery until December or January, so we’re basically going to spend the next few months suffering from constant ear-fluid-related fevers, crankiness, and infections. Damn you, little missing tube!)

We all have lingering coughs. Post-viral coughs, I think is the right word for it. Poor D has always been prone to these — he actually went to the emergency room last fall because he wasn’t breathing well, and got a whopping dose of steroids and other fun stuff — so he has his own fancy puffer system for whenever one strikes.

For me, Darling Husband, and C, this never-going-away cough is new. And unpleasant. I grabbed D’s puffer and used it the other night (bad, I know) because I was getting to the hard-to-breathe stage. It helped, but it didn’t go away.

Until it did.
And it was replaced with THE WORST SORE THROAT OF MY LIFE.
Really.

When the saliva builds up in my mouth, I get nervous because that means I’ll eventually have to swallow it. And OMG it hurtsssssss. My voice is going in and out, too, so I’m trying to whisper whenever possible. Last night, I resorted to writing messages to Darling Husband on the kids’ MagnaDoodle.

I’ve been Googling “sore throat remedies” for days, so let’s try to salvage this whiny sickness post and turn it into something more valuable.

Heather’s possibly-helpful list of sore throat remedies:

1. Vaporizers. If you’re not too lazy to dig it out from the top shelf of your linen closet, that is. (And I’m not, I guess)
2. Gargle with warm salt water (possibly helped)
3. Drink a lot of fluids (OMG IT HURTS TO SWALLOW, so NO)
4. Drink warm, soothing tea (possibly helped)
5. Drink cough syrup to coat your throat (yeah, that lasts about four seconds, and then you cough so hard your throat is raw again)
6. Suck on lozenges (didn’t help)
7. No, suck on numbing lozenges, not those candyish lemonade-flavoured ones, idiot (oops)
8. Take two (2) Advil every four hours (JACKPOT!)