Doing the fungal freak

So it turns out that the cough that has been plaguing me for a week now is — wait for it — pneumonia. I guess fertility and mild depression aren’t the only things that come around seasonally in May — I had pneumonia in May 2007, too, just before I got pregnant with Lucas. When I mentioned this to my GP yesterday, she looked at her notes and said, “Oh yes, I see that here, but then you had just a mild case in one lung and now you have it extensively in both.” Run down much, you say?

So anyway, in addition to the antibiotic that I got last time, I am supposed to use a steroid puffer twice a day. I’ve never used a puffer before and to be honest? This one is freaking me out.

When my doctor was explaining the puffer to me, she said “make sure you rinse well each time you use it” but what I heard was “rinse it well” meaning the puffer. Luckily, the pharmacist chose a slightly different way to phrase it, and I finally understood that it was my mouth I was supposed to rinse well after each use, not the puffer. “Because,” the pharmacist helpfully explained, “there’s a possibility for fungus if you don’t rinse well.”

Fungus.

In my mouth.

*all over body shudder*

Now, I know — I know — that fungus is things like thrush and athlete’s foot, both of which I’ve had. But I’m still freaked out. I have trouble eating raw mushrooms because they’re fungus. Fungus is a nasty word that evokes, in my brain at least, colonies of fast-multiplying creepy-crawly things that definitely do NOT belong in my mouth.

I was freaked out enough just trying to make sure that I actually inhaled while the puffer was puffing that I was lightheaded from the practice attempts and the three tries to psyche myself up for it, and the first blast shot not down into my lungs as was my intention, but straight out onto the middle of my tongue. Terrific. I mananged to gag and hack down the second puff, but then immediately set to rinsing the legions of already-multiplying fungal creatures off my tongue.

First, I rinsed with water. When I still had a vaguely fungusy taste in my mouth, I tried chewing up some saltines and THEN rinsing with water, thinking I could more or less exfoliate the inside of my mouth. Still not entirely convinced that my mouth was fungus-free, I went upstairs and attacked the problem with half a cup of Listerine. (And by the way? The new Listerine Total Health stuff? Brutal! Effective, maybe, but not unlike gargling with mint-flavoured turpentine.) I followed that up with some club soda, thinking the bubbles might loosen any last fungal vestiges, when it dawned on me that I was now ingesting the remaining traces of potential fungus instead of expelling them.

So now I have pneumonia and a tummy ache. I fear there are mushrooms growing in my gut. This can’t be good.

(And P.S.: don’t you think “Fungal Freak” would be an awesome name for a band?)

Author: DaniGirl

Canadian. storyteller, photographer, mom to 3. Professional dilettante. View all posts by DaniGirl