Been coughing and wheezing for five days.  Deep down in my lungs I can hear the fizzing-gurgling of stuff that shouldn't be there.  It seldom emerges, even after an hour of deliberate effort to tear it loose and spew it out.  Because of the concurrent head cold which I am also enjoying, each rib-cracking cough of my chest cold makes my head feel like the homerun ball at the end of a slugger's bat.  I am up to about 50 grand slams today; there must have been thousands yesterday.  I start the day with a swig of cough syrup and 7 ibuprofen.  Please write and tell me how foolish I am, how I should not even be allowed to have medicine if I am not going to follow the rules and make nice, how I deserve to be sick, to suffer and to die because I do what I feel like doing instead of feeling like I am told to feel, how commie, liberal, terrorist, pinkoe fags like me...  Well, you get the picture.  And really, don't get your panties all in a bunch; I have an appointment with the doctor in an hour.  Maybe he'll give me some psych meds, too.

I thought that I was all better when I got up today.  Tuesday night, my coughing and wheezing woke me from a sound sleep several times. ; Not so last night.  I woke with nary a gurgle.  Considered calling the doc's office and cancelling—too late for that, I decided.  Then I began rehearsing how I would explain my lack of distress during the appointment which I so urgently requested yesterday.  But soon the hack woke up too, and I was barking all over the house, and collapsing into a kind of combat crouch which I have developed for these episodes of sustained, explosive coughing.  So, we're off to see the wizard...