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Rosita Boland: I slept for 12 hours straight, and dreamt of nuns and donkeys

Driving west for a reporting assignment, I realised the annoying little cough I’d left Dublin with was developing into something else

By 4pm I was asleep, fully-clothed, on a Travel Lodge bed on the Tuam Road. Photograph: iStock
By 4pm I was asleep, fully-clothed, on a Travel Lodge bed on the Tuam Road. Photograph: iStock

It seems lots of people went down like skittles in January with various variations of nasty coughs. Let me share with you my own recent woes in that particular department.

Recently, I was out on the road for work, as I often am. I was due to spend two nights away from home in the west on a reporting assignment, during which time I would also write the article. This is routine.

On the appointed day, I drove west. Every now and then, I gave a quick cough. When I got to the town, I realised the annoying little cough I’d left Dublin with was developing into something else. I went into a pharmacy, came out with some cough syrup, and then got on with my interviews.

That night, I coughed a lot. The cough syrup was not making any discernible impact. Cough cough cough.

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The next morning, I could see from my weather app that the temperature outside was minus five. I went to take a shower at the B&B I was staying in, as one does. Then waited for the water to get hot, but it remained as resolutely icy as the weather outside. I did not take a shower.

While I was settling my bill, the proprietor asked if I had had any trouble getting hot water in the shower.

“It was grand,” I fibbed.

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“That’s great,” says he. “Because we forgot to turn on the immersion, but there must have been some hot water left over from yesterday.”

I was late for the first interview of the day because it took so long to de-ice my car. I am usually never late. Being late for the first interview meant I was also late for the second. In a tizz, I arrived at the location for the second interview, which was, I realised on arrival, in a former convent.

Before we began, my interviewee asked if I would like to see the nuns’ former chapel. I said I would. The chapel was surprisingly large, and the stained glass windows were still in situ.

“It’s lovely to come in and have a pray,” my interviewee said. I was fascinated to think that this man’s daily work was interspersed with ad-hoc visits to a deconsecrated nunnery chapel. We conducted the interview in his office, which overlooked a field with grazing donkeys, and which was so perishingly cold I kept my coat on throughout.

I got into the car, and went to call the clamper’s number, and then realised my phone was missing. This. Could. Not. Be. Happening

When we were finished, and I was walking to my car, my interviewee pointed to an enclosed space at the bottom of a second field. “That’s the nuns’ graveyard,” he said. “You might like to go down and have a look.” I did indeed walk to the graveyard and stood there for a while, counting the identical stone stubs. I got to 75, then stopped, thinking about those dozens of dead women who had once chosen a way of life so few now do.

There was more walking around in the bitter cold as I went to more interviews. Cough cough cough.

By the evening, at which point I was in a different town, I was beginning to feel very unwell. COUGH. COUGH. COUGH. I went to bed at 9pm, but did not sleep much due to the constant coughing.

At 6am, I made coffee and wrote my article, coughing all the while.

By the time I checked out of the hotel, I decided to look for a walk-in clinic in Galway. I parked beside the clinic, outside a supermarket. In the waiting room, I coughed and coughed, feeling like Typhoid Mary: I was the only one there without a mask. My phone was pinging with queries from my editor about the story I’d filed earlier. For once, I didn’t answer.

“So,” the doctor said, when he had done his work with thermometer and stethoscope. “You have a bad chest infection. And a high temperature. You need steroids and antibiotics, and I am going to put you on a nebuliser to stop the coughing because it really is very bad.”

Three of these things were entirely new to me. I had never previously had a chest infection, I had never been prescribed steroids, and what the hell was a nebuliser?

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For half an hour, I breathed into this nebuliser, and finally stopped coughing. I took the prescription to the next-door pharmacy, but their system was down, so I had to walk to another, feeling shaky as I did.

When I came back, my car had been clamped.

I got into the car, and went to call the clamper’s number, and then realised my phone was missing. This. Could. Not. Be. Happening. I got out of the car and discovered my phone on the roof. When I had left it there, I have absolutely no idea.

It was more than an hour before my car was de-clamped, after, ahem, I had coughed up €90. By this point, I actually felt delirious, between the lack of sleep, a temperature and the still-intermittent coughing. I started to drive through Galway, knowing when I uncharacteristically got confused at a roundabout, that I was not going to make it home that night.

By 4pm I was asleep, fully-clothed, on a Travel Lodge bed on the Tuam Road. I slept for 12 hours straight, and dreamt of nuns and donkeys.

I hope your own winter woes cost you less, and didn’t involve so much coughing.

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