Sick
It could be the fact that I let my Sudafed wear off, or that my cold/sinus infection was getting worse, but I think it was mostly the quartet of voices telling me I was really sick that had me feeling like I was dying.
First Brinna, as we caught up on our holidays via gchat:
"You're STILL sick?? Haley."
Then Michael, who responded to my text saying I might go to the Minute Clinic if I didn't feel better by tomorrow with, "Maybe you should go today after you're done at work."
Then my coworker, who gave me a tilted head, "you know better" Mom look when I told her antibiotics probably wouldn't help.
But it was the last voice, Jessica the Nurse Practitioner at the CVS Minute Clinic who really gave me permission to abandon myself to my snot-filled miseries.
"So you've had symptoms for a couple weeks?"
"Well, since Halloween, so like...two months."
"OH. Well, then."
She moves from her computer and has me sit on the paper-covered table so she can check my heart rate and blood pressure. One hand holding my hair back, she peers through the otoscope.
"Oh, your poor ears."
"Bad?" My ears had been achy, but they're almost always achy. I usually attribute it to a necessary side effect of eating too much cheese, based on an article my grandma sent me once about dairy and mucus.
"Normally ears are concave inside. Yours are convex."
She looks in my throat.
"Has your throat been hurting?"
"Not really."
Jessica the Nurse Practitioner sighs and puts down whatever doctor tool she was holding. Maybe it was a flashlight.
"Well, your ears are swollen, your throat is red and raw, and your nose is red inside. If your sinuses have been hurting..."
"And my teeth," I interject helpfully.
"...and your teeth," she agrees. "I think it's pretty clear you have a sinus infection."
"But you probably can't tell if it's viral or bacterial," I say, showing my Googling skills. Perhaps I need to pause here and explain my aversion to antibiotics. Antibiotics by their nature kill all bacteria, including good bacteria. This has a very adverse effect on my lady parts. Antibiotics lead to yeast infections, which for some reason seem to lead to UTIs or BV, which require more antibiotics. Once something is set off down there, everything goes crazy. So in general it seems better to just suck it up, suffer through it, and just hack and blow your nose until everyone around you is disgusted.
"No, but the fact that you've been feeling badly for over two months makes me think you probably had a viral infection that turned into a bacterial infection. It's not going to go away."
Fine. I'm resigned. And really at this point I just want someone to make my face stop hurting. My facade is fading with all this talk about how sick I am.
She writes me a prescription for antibiotics and I tell her about the yeast infections, not expecting her to do anything about it. She could give me a prescription for Diflucan, which will stop the yeast infection before it starts, but in the past it's been hit or miss whether or not a doctor will actually do that for me. They tend to not like prescribing medicine you might or might not need. Understandable, but frustrating when you know it's going to happen and it means you'll have to find MORE time to go to the doctor, have to have someone poke around your private parts like they don't believe you, wait for the pill to help, etc etc etc.
When she, without any arguing or further discussion, adds a prescription for not one but TWO Diflucan, I feel like I might just cry. Maybe it was just the relief of not having to argue, maybe the relief of things being simple for once, or maybe I was just starting to feel sorry for myself now that I'd let go of the "I can get better on my own" thing. She couldn't have been much older than me—in fact, she was probably a little younger. But it's the same feeling as when you've had a bad day and your mom wraps you up in a blanket and makes you cookies while you lay on the couch and watch Buffy reruns.
So now I'm at home, entirely immersed in my sickness. Sudafed completely out of my system and the new not kicked in yet, head throbbing, sinus clogged, face hot. I can't even stir up the energy to make dinner, but I have to so I can take my antibiotics with food. I'm huddled on the couch in my multi-colored reindeer leggings and sweatshirt, under a blanket, but I'm still freezing, so I put on my fluffy purple bathrobe for good measure. It occurs to me I'm collapsed on the couch like an elderly invalid when this morning I had convinced myself I was getting better. Am I finally giving in, or have I wimped out? Which part was psychological, the "I'm fine" before or the "I'm incapacitated" now? Probably both.
First Brinna, as we caught up on our holidays via gchat:
"You're STILL sick?? Haley."
Then Michael, who responded to my text saying I might go to the Minute Clinic if I didn't feel better by tomorrow with, "Maybe you should go today after you're done at work."
Then my coworker, who gave me a tilted head, "you know better" Mom look when I told her antibiotics probably wouldn't help.
But it was the last voice, Jessica the Nurse Practitioner at the CVS Minute Clinic who really gave me permission to abandon myself to my snot-filled miseries.
"So you've had symptoms for a couple weeks?"
"Well, since Halloween, so like...two months."
"OH. Well, then."
She moves from her computer and has me sit on the paper-covered table so she can check my heart rate and blood pressure. One hand holding my hair back, she peers through the otoscope.
"Oh, your poor ears."
"Bad?" My ears had been achy, but they're almost always achy. I usually attribute it to a necessary side effect of eating too much cheese, based on an article my grandma sent me once about dairy and mucus.
"Normally ears are concave inside. Yours are convex."
She looks in my throat.
"Has your throat been hurting?"
"Not really."
Jessica the Nurse Practitioner sighs and puts down whatever doctor tool she was holding. Maybe it was a flashlight.
"Well, your ears are swollen, your throat is red and raw, and your nose is red inside. If your sinuses have been hurting..."
"And my teeth," I interject helpfully.
"...and your teeth," she agrees. "I think it's pretty clear you have a sinus infection."
"But you probably can't tell if it's viral or bacterial," I say, showing my Googling skills. Perhaps I need to pause here and explain my aversion to antibiotics. Antibiotics by their nature kill all bacteria, including good bacteria. This has a very adverse effect on my lady parts. Antibiotics lead to yeast infections, which for some reason seem to lead to UTIs or BV, which require more antibiotics. Once something is set off down there, everything goes crazy. So in general it seems better to just suck it up, suffer through it, and just hack and blow your nose until everyone around you is disgusted.
"No, but the fact that you've been feeling badly for over two months makes me think you probably had a viral infection that turned into a bacterial infection. It's not going to go away."
Fine. I'm resigned. And really at this point I just want someone to make my face stop hurting. My facade is fading with all this talk about how sick I am.
She writes me a prescription for antibiotics and I tell her about the yeast infections, not expecting her to do anything about it. She could give me a prescription for Diflucan, which will stop the yeast infection before it starts, but in the past it's been hit or miss whether or not a doctor will actually do that for me. They tend to not like prescribing medicine you might or might not need. Understandable, but frustrating when you know it's going to happen and it means you'll have to find MORE time to go to the doctor, have to have someone poke around your private parts like they don't believe you, wait for the pill to help, etc etc etc.
When she, without any arguing or further discussion, adds a prescription for not one but TWO Diflucan, I feel like I might just cry. Maybe it was just the relief of not having to argue, maybe the relief of things being simple for once, or maybe I was just starting to feel sorry for myself now that I'd let go of the "I can get better on my own" thing. She couldn't have been much older than me—in fact, she was probably a little younger. But it's the same feeling as when you've had a bad day and your mom wraps you up in a blanket and makes you cookies while you lay on the couch and watch Buffy reruns.
So now I'm at home, entirely immersed in my sickness. Sudafed completely out of my system and the new not kicked in yet, head throbbing, sinus clogged, face hot. I can't even stir up the energy to make dinner, but I have to so I can take my antibiotics with food. I'm huddled on the couch in my multi-colored reindeer leggings and sweatshirt, under a blanket, but I'm still freezing, so I put on my fluffy purple bathrobe for good measure. It occurs to me I'm collapsed on the couch like an elderly invalid when this morning I had convinced myself I was getting better. Am I finally giving in, or have I wimped out? Which part was psychological, the "I'm fine" before or the "I'm incapacitated" now? Probably both.