So, the doctor visit: She was pretty damn surprised to hear about me getting the horse pill meds, and told us to take them back.

Well, since antihistamines, decongestants, antibiotics, etc., etc. haven't worked for shit on this cough, there's only two things it could be: allergies or asthma. Since the cough isn't triggered by anything and antihistamines didn't work, guess what it probably is :( This bums me out because well, EVERYBODY but my mother has asthma on her side of the family and some on Dad's side too. So guess what, it's inevitable! Oh, how I love hearing the "Oh, your grandmother's asthma was SO BAD" stories already. I enjoyed being perfectly healthy, and now I guess I'll be chronically not-healthy on some level for life. I was hoping to postpone that stage, you know? It was nice to be one person in the family that wasn't saddled with five chronic illnesses/problems of one kind or another. (Oh yeah, my genetics should so be passed on. With Dave's combined, would a child survive to get out of the womb?)

This is not confirmed yet- though in all honesty, I don't really know how they confirm such a thing, but apparently there's not much else it could be other than a permanent chronic problem. Cough for LIFE! I said to her that I never had any of the chest tightness/something draining/etc. stuff the relatives have, and she said, "Oh, some people just only have a cough." Oh great. She presumes I just always had it after Mom had to come out with "I think she's ALWAYS stuffed up because she can't smell," and I just couldn't fend off pneumonia so well or something.

(Honestly, is it really THAT BAD to not have that much of a sense of smell? I can smell most stuff and I really DON'T want to be like my mother, Ms. Sensitive Nose, who spent the entire weekend going on about how everything just STUNK so bad. No wonder I had issues during puberty. My nose stops caring so much after a few sniffs, and that's fine with me so long as I can breathe without having to use my mouth.)

I did breathe into one of those breath-o-meter whatsits, and did surprisingly well. I checked the little booklet, and I actually blew HIGHER than my lung capacity should be for my size. Of course, that was when I wasn't coughing- I am now and tried it, and ahem, it was lower :( She also had a lung X-ray done, and she said it looked mostly clear, except there was a huge black spot on my left lung which well, is most likely just my boob, because if I really had that big of a black spot I should be a whole lot sicker. She's calling in an expert and will call me back in a few days about that. Let's hope I don't have lung cancer blooming anyway. That's all we need, me going in for lung cancer and Mom for breast (yes, she found a lump, yes, she went in for a mammogram when I was in for my X-ray, I am trying not to think about it).

So who knows, I guess. I'll probably have to go to some other doctor soon enough for confirmation that I'm chronically problematic. And here I was hoping that after a year post-pneumonia it would go away. She put me on Robitussin, the old kind of inhaler, and a new kind of inhaler, and I'm supposed to call back in two weeks if THAT didn't help either. So far, well... I'm having my usual Sunday afternoon/night scheduled up-all-night coughing fit as I type.

I have no hope that this will change. And it's looking like it won't.

And now I'm getting chewed out by Aunt Susie for not washing my mouth out after every inhaler use, because I might get thrush!!!! Uh, why on earth do they call it that? It sounds like I'm going to eat a bird. Instead, it's "mouth sores from hell." Hmm, interesting that nobody mentioned the thrush!!! to me before when I had to take the inhaler for the pneumonia, or when I was put back on the inhaler months ago. I never rinsed, and I never got so much as dry mouth.

As a general rule, medications wig me out. I was pretty much med-free for years and years, refusing to take so much as an aspirin when I had yet another headache (astigmatism makes you way sensitive to sunlight). It wigs me out to be put on all these damn drugs, especially when now I have to worry about the lovely side effects like the thrush!!!! if I don't gargle. (I can't even gargle because of the gag reflex.) I am so not comfortable with this.

On a cheerier-yet-poorer note, we spent most of the weekend at the Harvest Festival craft fair. Ooooooh, wonderful stuff. Horrible for me to have this going on the weekend before Whole Earth, but wonderful stuff.

On Friday it was pouring a veritable avalanche of rain, so Mom and I went alone after the doctor's. I stopped at a booth to look at small velvet bags to put my tarot cards in, and bought one. Then I started eyeing the rest of the clothes and was drooling over the poncho/shawls and skirts, particularly a purple skirt of many colors and patterns (like the one on the link here). I knew that buying clothes at a crafts fair was pretty much way out of my league, but I was totally drawn to this stuff. The skirt in particular was calling out, "I'm for you."

Much to my utter shock, Mom bought me the skirt and shawl. She is SO nice. I was and still am boggled that she did that. She also bought me a necklace, some earrings, and a headband for my new hair from these two (I will have to check for their polymer clay book, as their clay stuff was magnificent). Blew me away.

Over the two days (Dad was there the second day, so Mom was pretty much only allowed to get food and stuff for him!), I ended up getting myself:

(a) a floppy purple hat (sadly, I lost her information- it's at Mom's somewhere), which is lovely for spring and decorateable,

(b) a lovely blue and lavendar flower pin from here, which went onto the hat,

(c) an ear wrap with a squiggle dangly from here- good thing I got it there now, because they don't know if they'll be at Whole Earth like usual this year. Crossing fingers...

(d) another AnKara headband, because I need new hair doodads since I can't use my old ones, and

(e) two pendants- a gold dichroic heart and a small blue glass heart. I chatted with this dude for quite a while, and

(f) two pairs of ear spirals from here. I'd seen and tried them on before in his store in SF, but before had long hair and well, that was just asking for trouble with the way mine tangled. (They're not as hard to put on as they look, really.) Now I've got two niobium pairs, one pair that look like stars and another that look like treble clefs and can have beads added on to them.

Craft fairs are so freaking cool. Everyone's sweet as all hell beyond the sales aspect of things, they tend to remember you and/or your outfit, they like it when you show off their stuff, etc., etc. I was so doing the Pretty Pretty Princess thing this weekend.

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