medical advice

So this past weekend I developed my fourth bout of illness since arriving in China two months ago. This time, I was still coughing from the cold several weeks ago (or possibly simply from pollution). Anyhow, Saturday morning I woke up with a very sore throat and felt ikky and had a headache and stuffy head. I dozed on and off all day. I developed a fever in the late afternoon which peaked at 101.5 and stayed there for several hours... it eventually broke sometime in the morning. Sunday I still was in bed feeling yucky. Monday I stayed home as well but was feeling up. Then Monday afternoon I developed an AWFUL cough! I don't have the ability of coughing UP anything... I cough it up and it goes right back down... so I can't tell anyone what color it is or if it is bloody. All I know is that the cough is horrible! I made some sort of home remedy to help me sleep (cayenne pepper, honey, vinegar, water..yuuuumm). I also developed a low grade fever around 100. Then today, Tuesday, I woke up feeling just awful... still coughing up my lungs and blowing out brown/green/yellow things from my nose... YUCK!... and I have developed lower back pain as well...blunt but not pleasant? Not sure if that is mabye from coughing so hard? So because my coughing was getting worse and worse, we decided to go to the doctor... which resulted in an argument because I was firmly inclined on going to a western style hosptial. After being in a hospital in Shanghai with Billy Grandpa, I decided I would rather die alone at home. Anyways... the international hospitals here cost an arm and a leg. The Chinese ones, are dirt cheap. We compromised and decided to check out my schools clinic. It was actually not bad at all (I guess Billy won the argument!). All they did was take my temperature, listen to my heart and ask me questions. Then they decided to draw blood... which consisted of a man taking my middle finger and gabbing (VERY HARD) a razor tip into it and then squeezing the blood so that it would come out. He then took a little, tiny tube and put it there to make the blood go into it... interesting... and more painful than the vein way. They said that something was high in my blood....They prescribed me four things... three of which are Chinese medicine (herbs and such) and one is Azithromycin. Can any of you tell me if that sounds right?? I think it is a sort of antibiotic?? Anyways... we are home now and I am resting again... Any suggestions would be nice... the things you can buy at the "drug" store here are more like ground bat wings and scorpion juice (I kid you not)... no Nyquil option. Let me know all you nurses in my family! Thanks..... Sick in China