Writing Retreat

Every spring, we take a vacation up to our timeshare in Avon (just west of Vail.)  For hubby and I, it has become a writing retreat.  We don't get as much done as in years' past, but we still utilize naptime and enjoy the creative time free from distractions.

Unfortunately, this year we were pretty idle by necessity instead of by choice.  The day before we left, I came down with a cold.  The first two days of our trip were pretty run-of-the-mill cold-wise, and we managed short walks and a trip to the playground.  The third day I woke up feeling better, but then the virus decided to move into my lungs.  This is not uncommon, by any means.  I have asthma, and colds frequently start bothering my lungs during the latter half of their duration.  This time, however, it got pretty bad.  I didn't feel like the usual dose of my inhaler was restoring proper lung capacity and that, coupled with congestion that got so bad I could hardly swallow because no air pressure could be released through my nose, and I was pretty miserable.  That night I got almost no sleep:  I just tossed and turned while trying to breath and trying not to worry about how bad I felt, how tired I would be the next day, and whether the baby was getting enough oxygen.

The next day I called my OB, party because I was worried about my breathing and partly because I wanted to know what drugs I could take to alleviate my symptoms.  As I'd feared, the doctor was worried about whether the baby was getting enough oxygen (especially since I was at high altitude and the air is already thinner) so she sent me to the local Urgent Care.  There, they diagnosed me with bronchitis.

As you can probably imagine, this meant we didn't get to do much else on our vacation.  We drove to places we would normally walk to and didn't go out much until later in the week, when the drugs I was taking finally made me feel human again.  It was disappointing not to feel well on vacation, but it was, at least, nice that we hadn't planned much big stuff anyway.  At least we weren't trying to go theme-park-hopping in Orlando or anything.  Doubly so, as our son came down with the cold as well and his fever even spiked to 101.8 once.  And now that we're home, hubby is coming down with it.  Ick.  I really hope this is the last illness any of us gets before baby arrives.  And that nobody gets sick during baby's first few months--illnesses during that young, tiny, fragile time are pretty scary.

On the plus side, though, hubby and I made a lot of progress on our collaborative screenplay during the week, and we each made some progress on our own projects, too.  I got one more story out into circulation, which brings my submitted story total to 8.  We didn't lose our vacation, we just had to take it really light.