Oh, Claritin-D, how I love thee, with all thy fabulous pseudoephedrine goodness.

This morning I woke up… well, functionally dead.  My whole body hurt, my head was spinning, I couldn’t stop blowing out and coughing up colorful chunks of mucus, and basically I was miserable.

But now I have Claritin in me.  While I don’t feel good by any means, I am far less miserable than I was this morning.  At a little over a dollar a pill, I can honestly say that the dollars I spend on Claritin are the best dollars I have EVER SPENT.

It’s not just allergies, because the man is sick too… But illnesses always seem to hit me harder.  I have some sort of underlying respiratory/sinus problem that amplifies the common cold into something utterly disastrous.  I grew up “toughing it out” and now I shudder to think about all the time I spent holed up my room, blowing my nose into cheap-ass toilet paper because my parents were too poor for either doctors or Kleenex.  When I get sick, it lasts so long that the skin on my nose begins to peel off from so much nose-blowing.

For the record, I would like to say FUCK PHENYLEPHRINE, the drug that has been substituted for pseudoephedrine in most over-the-counter medications.  That shit does not work.  Even Wikipedia agrees. It’s a hassle to deal with the pharmacist and have my driver’s license run to make sure I’m not under suspicion of manufacturing meth, a practice I believe to be facist and completely ridiculous, but I guess at least it’s available.