Mar 05 2007
Sickness Part 2 - Infection and in Health
Saturday morning, Shannon and I decided she and I should take care of number one, respectively. Her mother agreed to come watch Ben while we dragged ourselves to the nearest recommended clinic for adults.
Told we had a 30-minute wait, we hung around the packed waiting room, standing-room only. Most of those present were parents with their sick kids, several of whom stared intently at their Gameboys and PSP’s, fingers and thumbs busily working the buttons. Wellness is not a factor when one has bad guys to battle.
The two we happened to stand near got called within 30 seconds of our arrival, before I had a chance to complain about my heel spur. It’s one of only two “war wounds” that I have, so I make sure to grumble about it whenever possible. My captive audience went to waste.
Now seated, my body reminded me of another basic need.
“I’m hungry,” I said.
“I know. You’ve said that already,” Shannon said.
A girl age 10 or 11 sat next to me, wearing a soccer uniform, her arm in a black brace. A man standing over her — her father, I presume — gave her advice. “I’m telling you, if you hold that up here, like this, it won’t hurt as bad.” He held his arm above his head.
“It’s fine right here,” the girl said.
“Just try it. It’ll help.”
“I said it’s fine.”
“Okay, suit yourself.”
I complained every time the automatic double-doors stood open for several seconds, letting in cold air. The hot stuffiness quickly took back over each time, but drafts are a pet peeve; I couldn’t help myself.
I checked my watch at about the 45-minute mark, and then again 10 minutes later.
“Mark and Shannon,” a nurse called from the other end of the waiting room.
We ran the gauntlet of the ill and entered a small room featuring a blood pressure cuff and a horrible original oil painting of a valley of flowers. “So, who’s the artist?” I asked. Because, as I’ve said before, sometimes I just can’t help myself.
The nurse said, “Actually, it’s Dr. (name omitted). Yeah, I’ve never met another person who’s so good at using both sides of their brain.”
Shannon sat down and got settled as the nurse strapped the blood pressure cuff on her arm. “So, on a scale of one to 10, how would you rate your pain?” the nurse asked.
“Um, I guess about a five,” Shannon said.
When my turn came, I stated my pain was about a three. I didn’t have any actual pain, but I wasn’t going to tell her that.
She ushered us to an exam room and told us the doctor would be right with us.
“So, that painting was god-awful, right?” I asked.
“You kidding me? It was terrible,” Shannon said.
“Using both sides of the brain isn’t all that impressive if that’s the result.”
I noticed the clean linens stacked neatly on wire shelves, open for any disease-carrying bag of water to sneeze or cough on them.
“I’m hungry,” I said.
Shannon sighed. “Well, I need to pee. Every time you say you’re hungry, I’m going to say I need to pee.”
“This is going to be weird, both of us being examined in the same room,” I said. “We’ll have to ask which one of us is sicker. Like, if both of us went untreated, which of us would die first?”
She pointed at a white box on the counter. “I just hope they don’t have to use one of those rayon-tipped OB/GYN applicators on me.”
“And I hope he doesn’t have to go Dr. Jellyfinger on me,” I said.
We enjoyed the rare opportunity to talk like goofy adults.
“I’m hungry,” I said.
“I need to pee.”
The doctor came in with a wide smile on his face and rimless, rectangular glasses. His bushy brown hair was slicked back and he had a squat face with a comically jutting chin. He cracked wise about the color of our snot and how that’s the kind of detail doctors live for, indeed the very reason they went to medical school.
With his ear canal spying scope, he determined that Shannon had a slight infection in her left ear, and then with an index finger he tapped a path across her forehead and her cheekbones. “Does that hurt at all?” he asked.
“No, not really.”
I quickly turned my cap around so the bill wouldn’t obstruct the inevitable tapping. He did the same exam on me, and it went fine besides a little pain in my left cheek. I didn’t tell him it was just a nascent zit.
He said that I had a pretty bad infection in my right ear, and then left us alone again.
“I need to pee,” Shannon said.
“I’m hungry.”
A nurse returned with identical diagnoses and prescriptions for each of us. We had sinusitis, pharyngitis, and otitis media. On the nurse’s advice, we filled both orders for bacteria-be-gone but just one for all the rest. At $128 even after our insurance’s part, we figured we could just see how our symptoms are after a few days. There was no generic for the antibiotic (as far as we knew and the pharmacist told us).
Healthcare costs suck.
In our nearly 15 years of marriage, I’ve taken Shannon to the doctor before, and made it to all of her pre-natal visits. Besides that one time I insisted the nurse gel up my belly and run the sonogram sensor over it a few times “just to hear what’s up in there,” we’ve never been patients simultaneously. Although it was fun in its own twisted way, the cheapskate in me hopes it was the last time.
Now I’m hungry! *LOL*
BTW cold??? With the wind shill, it’s -24F today where I am!
How cold was it again down yonder bud?? LOL
Hope you’re both well soon…
Now I’m hungry and need to pee…
I just finished a really big coffee and will have to pee soon. But I also finished a granola bar and a banana, so I’m not hungry. (I still have an apple to eat.) And if I had to get glasses, I’d probably opt for the rimless kind, just like your doctor. I’ve only had the jelly-finger once, and I didn’t much care for it. If I could go back and do it again I’d try to remember to say, “Hey Doc, can you tell my girlfriend that my head’s not up there?” Just seeing the phrase ‘15 years of marriage’ impresses the heck outta me right now. I mean, first, you guys married young, so that’s awesome, but I’m only coming up on four years this summer and we’re still establishing ourselves as a couple and parents and such. Lastly, to rub salt in your wounds, your $128 would probably be my $30. Universal health care baby — it’s where it’s at. (Mind you, you’d have to put up with six months of winter and it’s -15C (5F) here this morning; when February and March roll around, I start to feel willing to pay a LOT more for warmer climes.)
I was going to put paragraph breaks in that, but I felt rambly, so left it.
You’re reminding me of all the visits to the OB with Lady J. I can totally see you asking for the full treatment with the jelly. I know there’s no way I have the cool equipment you do, but I bet I could make you jealous with the two recordings I have of my children’s hearts beating in the womb.
I hate that “rate your pain 1 through 10″. I dunno. I tend to opt toward the center cuz I always figure there’s a whole range of pain up there that I’ve never experienced.
Enjoyed the food/pee playfulness. (Sounds kinda gross when I write it that way ;)
Dave - Well, cold relative to the inside air. It must have been close to 80 in that place, and probably about 50 outside. So, not cold strictly speaking, but a noticeable shift when it blew through those gaping doors. I’ve never been a fan of drafts, or, for that matter, fans.
We’re indeed coming out of it. I finally resigned myself to blowing my nose while sitting at my desk instead of restricting that grossness to the bathroom. If I got up and walked down the hall every time, I’d never get any work done.
Curt - Sounds like my condition on most of our family trips as a child.
Josh - That last part about my asking for the full treatment was a joke. I totally challenge someone out there to do it.
If you got recordings directly from the clinic’s equipment, then I’m definitely jealous. Absent a portable recorder at that time, I lugged a laptop in there with an external mic hooked into the built-in mic port. The nurse had the sonogram thing turned up pretty loud, so I got some distortion.
Moksha - I agree on the pain rating thing. I didn’t mention it in the post, but Shannon and I commented about that while we were alone in the exam room. She’s felt childbirth, though, so if she said “5″ she certainly was in more pain than I was. The only true physical pain I’ve felt (besides as a very young boy before I could remember it) would have to be kidney stones. As bad as that was, I don’t want anything worse. I can’t imagine chronic severe pain. Must be very hard to live with.
Simon - Sorry, skipped you up there.
I could do without that dreaded exam the rest of my life, if health allowed it. I realize I’m not distinguishing myself from other guys when I say that (I hope), but it needed to be said.
Yeah, 15 years of marriage. But, we just started the parenting phase a few years back, and that takes the marriage to a whole different level of compassion, compromise, and companionship. You want all three, but one gives more than the others, and I’m sure everybody can guess which one. Doing it your way has advantages, too. If we had kids right after we got married, I’d have my kid off to college before I turned 40.
But, we got a full 10 years (almost 11) of marriage without having to worry about kids, etc. How many who have kids right away get 10 years somewhere down the road to not worry about kids, grandkids, etc. At least that’s the positive spin I put on waiting.
I guess you would need universal health care in a place that sees the sun only a few hours each day. A body needs that sunlight for good health, physical and mental. Seriously, though, our pharmaceutical costs are insane. We paid a $20 co-pay each for our doctor visit, and then the brand-name antibiotic alone costs us $50 each, after what the insurance pays. Not available in generic? Criminy!
I need to go back to work now.
I totally had the MP3 player plugged into their equipment. No loss or added noise. Thought one day I’d lay it down as a percussion track behind me playing something for them. One day.
I just wanted to chime in here and say that I didn’t mean to imply that having a child equals bad. Just different, with its own new joys and challenges.
Josh - Prince did that on a song. They ended up losing the baby, but its heartbeat lives on in that song. Not a great track, but it’s out there. I’ll play it for you sometime so you can totally steal the way he incorporated it, or make sure you don’t. That is, if you’re not a blubbering mass of goo listening to the beating heart of a baby that never was born.
How do you not like fans? Are you opposed to a cool spring breeze?
Au contraire, mon Gren. I love a cool spring breeze more than most things. It’s the fans I don’t like. Air conditioner blowing right in my face, box or oscillating fan blowing in my ear. I don’t like artificial breezes, I guess you could say.
Today’s story reminded me of Seinfeld. You (Jerry) and the wife (Elaine) sitting in the exam room discussing paintings, pain levels, hunger and bladder pressure.
All you needed was a black and white cookie.
Markus…What a bummer. That’s silly. The first-line recommended antibiotic for Sinusitis and Otitis Mediais Amoxicillin. Inexpensive, and should be on every insurance plan in the country. Then if that doesn’t work, Erythromycin would probably be next in line.
If I had found out the drugs were that much, I would have called the office and asked for a different antibiotic that was available in generic form. The nurse could have done that for you. When they prescribe drugs that aren’t on people’s insurance, people call…trust me…they call.
If you paid to go to the Dr., then you should be able to get a prescription that is affordable. Otherwise, why go?
Now that you’ve paid for your visit, I’d call the office back and ask for them to change them. At least you’ll have some antibiotics there should you need them for a pesky sinus infection in the future.
Keep that in mind next time. Doctors have NO IDEA which drugs are or aren’t expensive, on insurance provider’s plans, or even what is generic sometimes. As backward as it seems, it’s your job to know that when they prescribe something that you’ve never heard of, of it’s a brand new drug….ask for something else. For what you guys have, Erythromycin is probably as good as anything out there.
Next time, go online when you think you know what you have and see what the normal treatment is. Then when you go there, and they try to prescribe some off the wall antibiotic, ask why they wouldn’t prescribe what you read about online as the preferred treatment, and that it’s likely in generic and part of your plan.
Anyway…I hope you both get better soon.
Yay Charles :-)
Blitz - Seinfeld references. Love’em! That episode was a classic.
Charles - Oh, the brand name antibiotic was covered, by at a higher payment for us because it’s a brand name instead of a generic. Plus, we’re on the insurance plan wherein I do not pay any premium, versus our company’s better plan that does require a premium. So, it’s kind of a trade-off. We don’t get sick very often (right now), so this visit probably wasn’t that bad considering one month’s premium would cost about twice that.
Thanks for educating us. Too many people just don’t have any idea they can talk to a doctor like that. We know from growing up that they are just people. In fact, some of them are drunken sailors.
Ahhh…well, then it sounds like you’ve weighted it out. Just make sure that if you aren’t getting better, get it taken care of. Bad sinus infections can lead to chronic sinusitis, and once you’ve seen a sinus surgery, you’ll know that you don’t want ANY part of that. You go in with 4 major sinus cavities, and you come out with one roto-rooted cavity. And when they remove your turbinate, there’s nothing there to moisten the air you breathe. Just food for thought….