The American Patient

As I mentioned the other day, Jim has been feeling quite poorly with a horrible head cold since his return from Ethiopia. Now we all know how horrid it is to feel stuffed up with a sore throat and a cough and I don’t mind looking after him but I do wish he would stop going on about it and take heed of advice when it is given!

Maybe it is the nurse in me who just expects a patient to behave like a patient!

He has refused to spend the day in bed. Instead, spluttering all over everyone at work (whilst telling them how awful he feels). He has been asking all week ‘what can I take to get rid of this’

Now as most of us know there is nothing better than hot tea, Panadol and sleep for a day. At the beginning of the week I did do the right thing and ask for a list of symptoms in order to make a decision about medication -

‘Do you feel congested?’
‘No’

‘Do you have a runny nose?’

‘No’

‘Do you have a cough?’

‘No’

‘Do you have a headache?’

‘No’

‘Do you have a sore throat?’

‘Yes’  
Hurrah finally something tangible I can grasp hold of! So off I go to the chemist to see what they have in store. Of course it is exactly as I have predicted – rest and home remedies, but I do pick up some super strength LemSip powders ‘tea by any other name will taste as sweet’ (sorry Will Shakespeare).

To give him his due he has got worse over the week working it all out of his system. Yesterday evening I arrived home to find him fast asleep on the lounge after taking a dose of cough suppressant with a sedative in it. At last it has made him stop and rest, if nothing else.
SO now I can do my real nursey thing – cover him with a blanket, light the fire and prepare supper – the chicken pie which I started to prepare last night, and finished off with mash potato and 20 mins inthe oven. The dogs both come in, investigate the inert body on the lounge and settle down to guard their master.
When I come in with supper and wake him he is shocked to realise that it is dark outside – it is nearly 8pm and he has been asleep for 2 hours.

In need of a bit of unsedated adult conversation, I make him a mug of my father’s lemon, honey and brandy (we used to love having this when we were children, I think I used more brandy than my father did) rather than the LemSip and I settle down with a couple of fingers of something 12 years old. We just manage one episode of ‘Hamish McBeth’, the 1996 BBC series we are working our way through, before the eyes start to droop.
An hefty dose of cough mixture and he sleeps like a baby for the first time all week.
Thank God for drugs. I am definitely stocking up to be ready for next year!