Asthma?!

A little bit longer and I would have turned my perfectly healthy lungs into asthmatic ones. It’s a wonder what phlegm and a cough can do to your body.

I think I had an overdose of beer on the night of the Conlay competition. It bought me three votes for crowd favourite but also resulted the next day in a racking, hacking cough replete with phlegm. It kept me up almost the entire night on Friday. But still I refused to go to the doctor and admit defeat at the hand of antibiotics.

After hacking and coughing the weekend away, and still showing no signs of improvement by today, I headed to the Chinese doctor (Note the aversion to antibiotics. I grew up ingesting antibiotics, which is one of the reasons I think why my body is so weak now).

He put the stethoscope to my back and asked me to breathe. Halfway through the breath, I could hear myself wheezing and building up to a cough at the end of the breath. I heard the doctor mutter, “This is bad.” I took a couple more breaths and wheezed some more, then coughed some. Then I turned around to face him.

“The next stage to your cough would be asthma.”

Huh?

“Asthma?”

“Yeah, well that’s the next stage. Luckily you came now.”

Oops.

“Anyway, stay clear of chicken, seafood, eggs – half and hardboiled eggs are off limits fried eggs are ok, sweet foods, spicy foods, sour foods.”

I looked at him stunned.

“So what can I eat?”

“Pork, beef.”

Haah?!

“It’s only for a few days, until your cough clears.”

“And if it doesn’t clear?”

“Come back and see me.”

Oh-kay.

So I ended up with 4 packets of Chinese herbs, one for each day. I love seeing the Chinese medical shop people picking out and measuring the various herbs that they use to brew these potions. They use those tiny little handheld weights and they’re so good at using them.

The taste is another issue altogether but I find it curiously mind-boggling to watch the people behind the counter: so many herbs, so many shapes and sizes, so many smells and textures. And it’s all going into my brew.

Give me Chinese herbs any day. When that doesn’t work the third of fourth time around, then I’ll concede to taking antibiotics.