I'm the kind of person who thinks you can fix most things with enough sleep and water. I get a cold, I just deal with it. So when I started feeling a sore throat and a bit of a cough coming on, I did what I always do: nothing. I figured it would be gone in three or four days, just like always. This time, I was completely wrong. Instead of getting better, it just dug in deeper. The sore throat went away, but the cough stayed and got worse.

After about a week, this was not a normal cough anymore. It felt like it was coming from the bottom of my lungs and it was trying to claw its way out. It was a heavy, wet sound, and every time I coughed, my ribs and back would hurt. I had zero energy. I remember trying to carry a basket of laundry up the stairs and having to sit down halfway up because I was out of breath. I was sleeping on the couch because lying flat made the coughing worse. I was just propped up on pillows, waking myself up every hour with these horrible coughing fits. I was chugging cough syrup, but it was like drinking sugar water. It did absolutely nothing.

Finally, after about nine days of this misery, my wife basically told me she was driving me to the doctor and I didn't have a choice. I felt so worn out and defeated that I just agreed. Sitting in that waiting room, I felt like a zombie. The doctor came in, asked me what was going on, and I could barely explain it without starting to cough. He had me take a deep breath while he listened to my back with the stethoscope, and the deep breath triggered a coughing fit that I thought would never end. He just waited patiently. When I was done, he said, "Okay, that's not a virus. Your lungs sound terrible. You have a bacterial bronchitis, and it's not going to go away on its own."

He told me he was prescribing something called Zithromax, in what he called a Z-Pak. He explained that it was a really simple antibiotic course. I would take two pills as soon as I got home, and then just one pill a day for the next four days. Five days total. I remember thinking that sounded way too short. I was used to antibiotics being these ten-day things you had to take every few hours. This seemed too easy for how sick I was feeling. But at that point, I would have tried anything.

I got the prescription filled. It was just a tiny box with one little sheet of pills. I went home, swallowed the first two pills with a huge glass of water, and then collapsed on the couch. That night was the first time in over a week that I slept for more than two hours at a time. The next morning, I still felt sick, but the crushing weight on my chest felt a little lighter. I took my one pill for day two. That afternoon, I was able to walk around the house without feeling like I was going to pass out. I took my pill on day three, and that was the real turning point. I woke up on the morning of day four and realized my first thought wasn't about the cough. It was still there, but it was just a normal cough, not a body-shaking event. After the last pill on day five, I felt almost human again. The sickness just faded away over the next couple of days. That little five-day pack of pills completely knocked out the infection that had made my life miserable for almost two weeks.

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