[Just FYI, when I typed the title of this entry in intially it had a significant typo. Yes, you were almost treated to an entry called 'Sick as a Dag'!]

I got a bad bug in India, and it doesn't want to clear up. Having decided that I am an appropriate host, the tenacious bugger has had me in its grip for the past four weeks.

Far from being stomach-related, it's actually a horrible flu-like lurgy. For a month now, I have cycled repetitively through days and nights of snuffling, coughing, swollen tonsils, aching throat, and back to snuffling again.

As time has worn on, my faith that I could 'throw it off' has waned. Vitamins have done nothing, and this thing laughs in the face of attempts at rest and recuperation.

By the time we got to Bangkok, I was desperate. The coughing had reached proportions where I could no longer sleep at night (and nor could Andrew). Just lying down brought on harsh, dry coughing spasms like nothing I've ever experienced. Every bout brought me to the point of retching, so great was the force of the cough.

We visited a Khao San Rd pharmacist, whose advice was swift, despite not having listened to my cough or my chest at all: 'cough is dry because wetness inside. Must have antibiotic and medicine for cough.'

The cough is dry, and there's no infected phlegm, I kept thinking. Surely this was incorrect? Just cough medicine would do. Enough of this rampant over-prescribing!

We went to the next pharmacy down the road, a Boots Chemist as it happened. 'Dry cough, just needs cough syrup,' was the thinking here. Excellent, I thought - maybe now I can sleep. Puchase of cough medicine duly made.

Three days, and the illness worsened further.

No sleep was possible, my stomach ached from the tremendous hacking and conversations were becoming nearly impossible. Our friends Jess and Jules (with whom we met up in Bangkok) were full of fortitude in dealing with me as an anti-social, snivelly-nosed, barely-breathing wreck.

Back to the over-prescriber: 'I need antibiotics,' I pleaded. My mother is a pharmacist and Andrew's mum a GP - so I knew how deeply wrong it was to be in a pharmacy grabbing at product like candy. But I didn't care. I was ready to throttle this woman to get me some frickin' relief.

Her first choice was Cipro - 'No way!' I countered. 'That stuff is way too strong for me; I took it for severe gastro in Mexico and I'm not taking it again!'

She hunted around on the shelves while I brooded over the fact that I'd moved to actively arguing with a person dispensing drugs like I was shopping in a shoe store and displeased with the colour of the pair of shoes I was trying on.

Eventually, we settled on Amoxicillan & Clavulanic Acid. We then started to battle about dosage as she insisted that I take 1000mg, whereas I wanted her to dispense 625mg.

My powers of persuasion were evidently waning, as she would not give in on this point. Andrew then had the tedious task of clucking sympathetically when I later read the Product Information which clearly stated that 1000mg was reserved for 'serious infection only' and that the regular adult dosage was 625mg. Given that this woman had not even asked how long I'd been sick for, or what my major symptoms were, her insistence on this point was dubious. In fact, her reasoning was thus: 'You weighing over 50 kg, not allowed take 625mg!'

Not allowed, my arse.

As we left the store, she called out merrily, 'I forgot important information!' I had had trouble getting her to confirm when and how the drug had to be taken, so I thought maybe she'd had a change of heart and was going to set me straight on this point.

Not quite. Her advice was this:

No alcohol;
No ice;
No cool water; and
ABSOLUTELY no orange juice.

'Lemon juice is okay!' she scribbled as a final addendum.

Gotcha. This was now verging on the bizarre. Orange juice and lemon juice would likely be viewed interchangeably in the West - valuable sources of Vitamin C, and good choices for a person with a flu-ey problem.

Here, orange juice, like cool water, was a fearsome bogeyman to someone in my condition. 'Make you VERY wet in here,' the pharmacist cried in alarm. 'You have cold drinks - then you cannot sleep because coughing bad!'

Two days later, cough is still horrendous, but the antibiotics seem to be taking effect. Despite all my crankiness with the process, I have to admit that as soon as I started taking the Amoksiklav, vast oceans of awful phlegm started to stir up from deep within my chest.

It was indeed 'wet inside', but as to whether the diagnostic process involved was sound, I can't really say.

Just to be safe, I'm staying off that orange juice.