There's no place like home for the holidays

And that's where I'm going to be staying for some time.

Not to completely gross you all out but I think I have moved from bronchitis to pneumonia to some form of the black plague.

Keem has been exorting me to "cough it out," to get rid of the crap that has invaded my lungs. She may have regretted this yesterday.

After she got home, we sat down in the living room to watch a show. She was telling me about her day and I wanted to spend sometime in a room that was not either my bedroom or the bathroom.

Keem: And then I got to be on the Help Desk...
DM: Hold that thought. I'll be right back.

Fifteen minutes later, I am back on the couch. Freshly showered (I'm not going into much detail here, okay? Figure out why I would have had to take a shower) and ready to hear the rest of her story.

DM: Okay.
Keem: Cheryl was asking me to help her out with a project.
DM: Um, yeah. I'll be back.

This repeated for about an hour.

The nice thing about having a DVR is it is really easy to pause things when the person you're viewing the show with has to keep running off to the bathroom every fifteen minutes or so.

Finally, we finished watching the show and it was time for bed. The only way I've been able to sleep is if I take a 100 mg tablet of Seroquel. It knocks me out for about four hours and then I cough.

As I was taking my pill, I had to go to the bathroom again. Oh, yay.

And then I started coughing.

Keem: Are you okay?
DM: Cough. Cough cough cough. Cough. Haaaaaaccck. Gaaaaaaaggggg.
Keem: That didn't sound good.
DM: Yeah. You know how you keep telling me to cough that crap up?
Keem: Yeah?
DM: I just did.
Keem: That's good.
DM: No. No, it's not. I coughed it up on me.
Keem: What? Oh. Eew.
DM: Uh, yeah.

There's a scene in Ghost Busters that quite perfectly sums up this entire moment for me. Peter Venkman (aptly played by Bill Murray) comes across the green ghost/slime creature thing. It gets him. As he's standing there, his co-workers show up and Peter says, in just the right tone, "He slimed me." If you haven't seen this movie, of course, this will make absolutely no sense to you. But I slimed myself. It was, in a word, horrific.

I am alternating between the slime, coughing up the mucus that has invaded my lungs (and quite possibly pieces of my lungs), running to the bathroom constantly with other issues (and having to shower a lot) and I didn't think it could get any worse. But it can. Oh, believe me, it can!

Today I coughed so hard that I ended up, um, how do I put this tactfully? Well, let's say this. I am considering wearing a diaper. Or maybe some Depends. They were good enough for June Allyson. The sad thing about this is that it happened more than once.

I'm supposed to do laundry, I have Christmas presents to buy and cookies to bake and I don't know when I'm going to accomplish this. If it gets any worse, I'm going to have to have Keem take me to the Emergency Room.

This is the worst that I have felt in a long time. The last time was probably after I got back from Mexico. That was fun, being out of work for three weeks.

Beth, I'm very sorry and I wish it could be different but I am not going to be able to go to karaoke tomorrow night. At this point, I don't know if I'm going to go anywhere again.

Anyway, if you could all say a prayer or light a candle or maybe think some kind thoughts or rub a Buddha's belly or the spiritual gesture of your choice, I would really, really appreciate it.

Got to go, Keem is getting tired of me coughing on the computer. I am supposed to go to bed like a good Dana. Love to you all.