Touch Of Despondency

Wednesday was more of the same: coughing, feeling miserable, lying around in this stupid apartment with no energy to leave or do anything. Being sick in the summer is pretty much one of the most miserable things I have encountered. Being sick in the summer and having to stay home all by myself with no friends, mom or sister to come by and make me some soup or cheer me up is even more miserable. Thankfully, I have my cell phone, but I've even been too tired, or coughing too much, to talk on the phone all that much.

Am I feeling sorry for myself? I don't know, maybe a little. I just feel really crummy. I hate this. I hate having to stay at home. It completely sucks. I hate that there are all these dishes to do but that my head feels swimmy whenever I stand up. And I absolutely can not stand that for some unknown reason I have an endless stream of mucus stuck in my throat that my body insists upon trying to cough up so violently that I think I actually pulled a muscle coughing. I'm not even kidding about this. Since yesterday, or the day before - the days are now running together - every time I cough, I get this searing pain on my left side near my bottom two ribs. I think I freakin' pulled a muscle. I can't even believe that! Is it dangerous? Am I bleeding internally? Will the muscle heal? Will this stupid cough every stop?

Seriously, I'm at my wit's end. I feel like complete and utter crap. I called my doctor today and am hoping she'll give me some helpful information when she calls back later. I seriously want to rip open my throat just so I don't have to feel the congestion sitting there, or feel my body gearing itself up for another coughing fit. I can't stand it. Maybe tranquilizers would help?

But I'm too scared to take tranquilizers (not that I have any) because I think they might make me stop breathing, in light of all the respiratory issues I'm having at the moment. I feel the same about that hydrocodone cough syrup. It makes me feel like something is pulling me under the water. Like I'm going to die. Evenso, I took it again last night at 2 am after I woke up in another coughing fit that left my side in pain, my throat feeling raw, and the stupid, insufferable mucus sitting exactly in the same spot where it had been before I started coughing.

I'm miserable, bored, scared, I haven't slept much, and for most of every day I'm all alone. At least last night I slept for about 8 hours, six were actually uninterrupted which is something I hadn't experienced since last Thursday.

In addition, I'm stressed about stupid fucking work. I'm not even stressed about the Dragon Lady or my Case-From-Hell; Dragon Lady can't do anything to me when I'm out sick. Even she is not so powerful as to be able to challenge the phlegm that has taken control of my body. I'm stressed because of another case that I work on where we're supposed to take the deposition of this pro se (not represented by an attorney) defendant. The defendant who beat my client for 8 years of their marriage and held her hostage at gunpoint during the last incident.

This guy is nasty. Every time I go to a hearing where he's present he glares at me, my client, and my co-counsel. He's not very bright, unpredictable, and for all I know he might still possess a gun, even though he has an order of protection against him that forbids him from doing so. The point, readers, is that I do not want to be in a room alone with this guy, nor does my male co-counsel. We certainly don't want to be in his vicinity when he hasn't been forced to walk though a metal detector.

The deposition is scheduled for Tuesday of next week, and even though I've been out sick, I've been trying to speak with my co-counsel and to coordinate the necessary arrangements. My co-counsel has been absolutely no help. He's in London, and he would rather not have us do the deposition because, frankly, he's not that into doing work. I've been trying to persuade him that in order to adequately represent our client we should probably take the depo, even if we don't get anything useful.

But, even if I could get him on board, we've now run into this other issue, where it looks like we can't take the depo at the firm in any way that would eliminate the security risk, and the court has already told us we can't take it there. So what the hell can I do?

It's so frustrating. Frustrating because no one, apparently, has ever dealt with this situation before (it's like that constantly with this family court case), my co-counsel seems more inclined to just ditch it than to figure out a way for us to do it, and I'm sick at home trying to deal with this.

I'm also stressed out, demoralized and saddened about other issues that I can't discuss here. All of which is adding stress and making me feel even worse than I'm already feeling. I can't take this anymore and I don't know what to do. It's so frustrating and painful when you've been trying so hard at something, and it's just not working. I'm tired of feeling hurt. It's making me sicker.