I've been sick all week with covid.  The fever has gone which is nice; I was tired of the whole "I'm freezing", "I'm boiling" aspect of a fever.  The worst part of covid for me, has been the coughing and the copious amounts of phlegm.  I've pulled a muscle in my abdomen from coughing and my ribs are killing me.  Coughing has become very painful and I have to cough to get the phlegm out of my lungs, because if it lingers there, I'm at increased risk of pneumonia.  I had pneumonia once when I was twleve years old and it was the sickest I've ever been in my life.

Yesterday I dragged the humidifier out of the basement and turned that on to help thin out the mucous in my chest.  Last night I turned my bedroom into a sauna apparently, and I was able to sleep, propped up and drugged.  It was wonderful but I scared poor Jack.  When Jack woke up this morning, poppa was in the garage smoking and Jack couldn't open my bedroom door because it was swollen shut from the humidity.  That freaked him out a little.

I'm thankful my lungs were healthy to begin with when I got this virus.  I can imagine the havoc wrecked upon already damaged lungs.  I read a very interesting article this morning about the phlegm produced by patients with covid,  Gummy Phlegm and Covid 19. It's strange that Covid 19 causes this overreaction in our body, too much hyaluronan, when normally, hyaluronan is a good thing.  Is it similar to the cytokine storm that can be so deadly to Covid patients?  Some cytokine is a good thing, too much is deadly.  I guess it's like anything, some is good, too much of something can be deadly.  I know, I'm a science nerd and in another life I would have gone into microbiology, my all time favorite course.

I'm also thankful I'm still strong enough to cough up all this phlegm.  Again, I can imagine how awful it is for the very young and the very old, or the very out of shape, to cough this much and this hard.  Coughing is how we clear out lungs, get rid of irritants and in this case, get rid of phlegm, which if it was to build up, would put me at high risk for pneumonia.  I'm trying to embrace my coughing, in fact, now I'm embracing a pillow when I cough because it helps with the pain in my chest and abdomen.

I'm thankful the big guy has taken on so much care of Jack.  I'm trying to stay away from both of them.  I mask when they're at home and wipe down all the surfaces that I can with cavi wipes, before they come home.  

Hopefully I'll be back to my normal self before much longer.  I'm not a fan of sick.  I'm off to hydrate and do some deep breathing exercises.