I came back from work and was fine.
I was fine for most of the night, too, when I was awake at least.
...And then, I tried to sleep.
Tried.
The coughing fit was apparently enough where the whole house heard me throughout the whole night.
And come morning I felt like--and pardon this but there literally is no other word for it--crap.
Not crud.
Not junk.
Not hell, or for that matter a more severe curse word either.
Crap.
No other word sufficiently describes how I felt.
A unique combination of misery and general un-wellness, of hellish and yet not hell, of (and for this I really do apologize) shitty, but not being quite in the spot where that's the appropriate term to describe what I was.
Just crap. (Itself a more vulgar term than I'd prefer, and yet the only accurate one.)
I had to go to work, and it was terrible overall.
There were moments where I felt fine!
There were moments where I felt even better than yesterday!
And then I was bombarded with the waves of not-better, so strong that I seriously wondered if I could make it through the day.
Before leaving for work I canceled going to dance because I was feeling too sick.
At work, more often than not, I regretted it because I thought I'd be fine. Especially once home from work, too, I thought I'd be fine.
Yet just often enough.
Every once and a while.
I would be hit with a nasty reminder of why that was absolutely the right call to make.
In spite of this.
You might think that this is doctor-worthy, but...
...Weird as this sounds, I actually think this is what's supposed to happen. Because while most of my coughing isn't productive, for the first time...some of it IS. Not all, only some, but some is better than none.
Now, having productive coughing also means my body just experiences the absolute utter misery of feels-like-death.
But having that is better than not having a productive cough at all.
Because a productive cough means my body is trying to expel the illness from me--and is starting to succeed. An unproductive cough means it hasn't succeeded yet. Basically, I think what happened was the road to recovery.
I was really sick, but untreated.
When I started my treatment, I felt great, almost cured--but there is no such thing as a magical cure. The treatment starting its work made me feel better, thus why I could return to work, but it wasn't me being fully better; I was still, underneath the illusion of healthiness, sick.
And now, when the treatment needs to do the hard work, I'm showing signs of sickness again and actually feel worse than I did before, to the point where working is miserable--but this is me actually starting to get better, and it will work if given the proper time to. Also assistance, from antibiotics!