13Oct08 I’m a hypocrite

I’ll admit it. When my husband or anyone else claims they’re sick I’ll immediately tell them that they should go to the doctor or stop complaining. The last is said under my breath… most of the time. But after I woke up Friday with an extremely sore throat I resisted going to the doctor. I had all kinds of excuses: it’ll go away soon. It’s just allergies. They’ll tell me that it’s something viral and that I’ll get over it in a few days anyway. I was able to resist until Saturday night. By then I was feeling so miserable that agreed to go to an after hours clinic the next day.

I expected a rather long wait. Every time before that I’ve been to an urgent care clinic there have always been lines. Not so here; it took longer to fill out paperwork than it did for my entire visit. Yes, that’s right. The whole visit. The nurse weighed me, took my temperature and blood pressure and finally asked me some questions before the doctor came in. He came in, looked at my throat for all of 2 seconds, jammed that thing in my ears, asked if I had a cough, where do I work, do I have kids, might have said something about strep and sent me out the door with a prescription for a z-pack and Zyrtec. It was over before it had barely begun. Also, it didn’t help that I really couldn’t understand him. The whole visit was an example of the worst bedside manner I’ve ever seen.

With nothing else really that I could do we went to CVS to fill my prescriptions. That took longer than the doctor’s visit, too. When I got home to take my medicine I noticed a discrepancy with the instructions for one of them. The bottle said “Take 1 tablet every day for 5 days.” That might be a problem since there were only 3 pills in the bottle. Through the magical powers of Wikipedia I discovered that one was supposed to be my z-pack. The z-packs I’ve taken before were 5 pills on a cardboard packet so I was more than a little confused. A call to the pharmacist told me that due to the way my prescription was written (kudos to him for being able to read it; I couldn’t), something about restrictions my insurance placed, and the fact that a 3-day z-pack exists allayed my fears. I’ve taken 2 of the 3 500mg doses and will be taking the third tomorrow morning.

While I’ve been sick I’ve done a good deal of reading and watching some shows online via hulu.com and, of course, youtube. Reading reminds me that all of the books I have listed in the “upcoming” section on my Books and Manga page are out. I just need a way to get my hands on them.

Excuse me now as I go in search of something I can eat that isn’t ice cream or a baked potato. I’ve had enough of those these past few days to last me for a good while.