Waiting for the Apocalypse

Around the end of last week, it became evident that the old, lingering cold that we all were fighting off over New Year's was turning, in DOB's case, into something more sinister.

We tentatively diagnosed it as a sinus infection and tried to treat it at home with tea and broth. On Sunday morning the agony was sufficient that he went to Urgent Care, where the doctor confirmed that it was a sinus infection and that it should be treated with tea and broth, as they are stockpiling antibiotics for the zombie apocalypse.

So we did more tea and more broth. DOB usually handles illness by passing out in bed for between 12 and 36 hours, depending on the severity. Although this freaked me out on our honeymoon, I have come to appreciate it. All I need to do is pour water down his throat every few hours and wait for him to reemerge, leaving me free to concentrate on other things. However, a sinus infection does not cooperate with the "lying down" part of this equation, and so he has had to deal with being sick while being up and miserable and it is taking far longer. Especially at night.

Monday night he started having an asthma attack on top of the sinusitis. (Probably triggered by me thinking that that afternoon was the perfect time to go on a quick shopping trip with Duchess, leaving him alone with the younger three kids, and then they thought they smelled something funny, which is hard to confirm when you have a sinus infection, and then I couldn't hear my cell phone because it was covered with clothes we were going to try on, so that by the time I got home they had all been sitting outside, DOB bundled up in blankets with a towel over his head, for a couple of hours.) Anyway, he couldn't breathe and his chest was tight and he couldn't move or do much beside moan, so I called the 24 hour nurse hotline. The fellow on the other side was doubtful, possibly because it was me on the phone, which meant the conversation went like this.

QOC: "Hi, my husband can't breathe and his chest is tight, but I think it's just his sinuses and his asthma, so can you please tell him he's not going to die, and if it's OK for him to use the inhaler?"
Nurse: "Hmm, that's a little concerning. Do you think he might be having a heart attack?"
QOC: "Nah, it's mostly in his head. I mean, he can't move or anything, but he gets like that when he's sick."
Nurse: "Well, let me talk to him."
DOB: "Graaahwww."
Nurse: "Well, you could go in if he seems to be doing worse. Or you could try the inhaler."
Ducklings in background: "Hey mama! Mama! Mama!"
QOC: "It's an awful lot of trouble to take him in."
Nurse: "I can tell."

So we didn't go in and he used the inhaler and came to the regretful conclusion that he was going to live, after all. And things went along and he got a cough to go with the sinuses and this afternoon he decided that he needed to call the nurse hotline again. This time he talked to the nurse himself, and this time it was a different nurse. He thought he was answering all the questions right, but perhaps he shouldn't have used terms like "zombie green" in describing bodily discharges. This nurse told him to get back into urgent care immediately, because, while it might just be the sinuses doing their thing, it might be some far more serious condition she was not at liberty to disclose.

He took himself into urgent care and they did various tests of his mental functioning and decided it was still just the sinuses doing their thing. But at least they gave him some medication that may help with sleeping, which hasn't happened in a while. They never did tell him what the serious condition they were concerned about was, but I'm thinking it was probably the zombie plague. I should possibly wear a helmet to bed, just in case.