#028 In which our hero discusses his wife's care(lessness).

"I'm fine, but I'm having trouble breathing."

Does the above sentence strike you as odd? I mean, it's not just me, right? If someone said that to you, you'd notice the incongruity of the two parts... not being able to breath properly and being "fine" just don't seem to go together, wouldn't you agree?

Well, if you were my wife (and statistically speaking, 33.3% of the readers of this site ARE my wife) you wouldn't agree.

My wife has asthma, but it's very mild. She generally uses a rescue inhaler maybe once every four or five months, and then only if it's really cold or if she's been working out and breathing hard for an extended time. But yesterday she was coughing quite a bit in the morning, and her breathing was a little labored in the afternoon. She went to the doctor and he gave her two inhalation treatments which didn't help, then took a chest film to make sure she didn't have pneumonia (she doesn't). Finally he sent her home with a prescription for an oral medication that was supposed to make her feel better.

Now here's a question: if you were having trouble breathing and you were at the pharmacy with a medicine IN YOUR HAND that would ease your breathing and make you feel much better, would you:

a. Take it immediately
b. Wait until you got home

Well, 33.3% of the readers of this site would wait until they got home. And it was at this point that I called to make sure my wife wasn't dying on the kitchen floor, only to have a gasping creature that purported to be my wife answer the phone. Naturally this freaked me out and I had to rush home, images of an ashen-faced dead wife dancing in my head.

Turns out the meds didn't help anyway, and another call to the doctor resulted in her taking some Benadryl, which seemed to help. Far as our doctor can tell it was some sort of strange allergic reaction, cause unknown.

Which bring me to the point of this post: I don't think my wife takes very good care of herself. Matter of fact, if I listed the three phrases I utter most to her, they would be:

"I love you"
"I wish you would take better care of yourself"
"Can't you put my laundry away for me?"

For the record, the three phrases my wife says most to me would probably be: "I love you," "You are such a geek," and "Because it hurts when it grows back, that's why not!"

Think I'm making this up? Another quiz. Say you were riding a 1,500-pound horse. Then say this horse freaked out and bucked you off, causing you to soar thirty feet in the air to land in hard-packed dirt on your neck. Would you:

a. Wait until medical personnel checked you out to make sure you didn't break your neck, your back, or both
b. Carefully allow others to carry you to a soft place to lie down
c. Immediate get up, tell others to stop fussing over you and walk it off

Another? What if you had a pounding headache and you had a medicine cabinet stocked with no less than four headache relievers; would you:

a. Take something to make your head feel better
b. Wait until you started bleeding out of your ears before you took half the recommended dose

I may be exaggerating a tad, but you get the point. It drive me crazy; all the more so because she's a SCIENTIST, well-versed in the wonders of modern day medicines.

It also doesn't help that I'm a big fan of using drugs in other than their prescribed usage. Can't sleep? A big shot of Nyquil puts me right out. A little sleepy after lunch? A couple No-Doze and I'm good to go. Our scientific community has provided us with a wealth of wonderful over the counter pills, would we not be remiss if we didn't take full advantage of them?

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to take my morning dose of fructose, dextrose, xanthan gum and red#40 in convenient Pop-Tart form. Ah, sweet, sweet science!