First it was allergies. Then it was diarrhea. This week? The flu!
The week started out so well, but I must have picked up a bug from one of the patients on Monday. Went to work on Tuesday and lasted through half the morning before I started sniffling, then coughing. I left work early and stopped by the pharmacy for some cold medications. Asked for guanfenesin, which they didn't have. The pharmacist suggested Decolgen forte, which contains paracetamol and chlorpheniramine, which I recognized, and phenylpropanolamine HCL, which I didn't recognize. But as I was feeling kind of miserable, I took some anyway. Went home, went to sleep. Woke up a few hours later with a fever. And I've been fighting it until it finally broke late last night (on Wedsnesday). Between sleep, coughing, and listening to the people ringing in the Year of the Goat, I researched phenylpropanolamine HCL. Turned out that it is a decongestion, but it had also been used in diet pills, and it has been banned from the US since the early 2000s for its potential effects of hemorrhagic stroke in women between age 19 and 49.
So I went to another pharmacy and found a drug where I knew all the ingredients, Sinex Forte. Manufactured in India, it contains phenylephrine, paracetamol, dextromethorphan, and cetirizine.
The good news is that the fever is gone and I'm feeling well enough to get up and go outside. The bad news is that I feel like I'm coughing every 5 minutes. Hopefully I'll be well enough to go to work tomorrow and hopefully I won't catch anything else. But with my luck, it might just be malaria!
Happy New Year!
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