Thursday, April 30, 2009

I Chickened Out, Not Pigged Out

I ran out of there screaming.

OK, I didn’t run. And I wasn’t exactly screaming. But I was bawling like a baby.

See, I have a cold, a nasty one that is clinging to my lungs and nose right this minute. It sucks, and all I want to do is crawl into bed and sleep. As a stay-at-home mom though, that desire has to take the back burner. I was doing my best to get through the day by letting them watch as much Pokémon and Madeline as they could stand while I curled on the couch and tried to rest. Being the little bundles of energy they are though, it didn’t nearly last as long as I needed. So, I trudged on.

Greg, being the super man he is, came home after lunch so that I could go to the doctor. I really only wanted to go burrow myself into my bed, but since he took the afternoon off for me, I figured I should go get checked out to make sure I didn’t have some lung gunk that needed antibiotics to be fully exorcised from my body. I headed off to the closest Urgent Care.

Queue scary music.

I walk in and was pleased to see that I was the only one in the lobby. Cool, I thought, I can get in and out quickly. We’d been hearing stories about the cities where swine flu has been found to be overrun with sick people, some waiting upwards to 6 or 8 hours to see a doctor. My city is one of the places where swine flu was reportedly found in a two year old girl, so I considered myself lucky to be alone in the lobby.

In walks mask-boy number one and two others, all of whom get called before me which is something I still don’t get. None of them were bleeding from the ears or any other visible orifice, so what gives? Now, I am not panicking about this swine flu, but I do consider myself cautious, especially when it comes to my children. For example, I don’t let them stick their mouths on grocery carts or put their hands in their mouths after touching wild bores.

Since everyone gets called before me, I start wondering if I am going to end up in a room that one of the others called before me had occupied. Would I end up in mask-boy’s room? Phew. My name gets called before anyone else has been released, so I stop playing the little nightmare in my head and follow the masked nurse to my room. She begrudgingly takes my temperature and blood pressure, and then leaves suddenly. She walks back in and asks me to wear a mask since I coughed. Once. Into my elbow. So, I put it on feeling like something out of Outbreak, and wait. I have now been there for over an hour, and I just want to sleep.

Queue scary music.

The doctor outside my door talking to his colleagues must be a distant relative of Greg’s. His booming voice has to be a DNA-traceable trait tied to Greg’s lineage somehow. Then I start listening to this said booming voice. And then I started to cringe. This doctor, the very doctor that I am going to see today, is THE doctor that diagnosed the little girl with the swine flu yesterday. He starts talking about how sick she was and how they tested her two-month old sister too. He continues that the mother was there to be tested. Today. There. What are the frickin’ odds in a city of 250,000-ish, I would go to the same Urgent Care where the swine flu was reported and be seen by the same doctor that diagnosed it?

All I can think is holy crap, I don’t want to come home with something worse than I came in with. Did the doctor catch it and not know he had it yet? Has he unknowingly passed it on to all of the patients he has seen?

I am not proud of this next moment, but it is what it is. Two nurses came in to get something out of the cabinets, and I started to cry. I said that I just wanted to go home and that I didn’t want to be seen by the same doctor who has been around the swine flu. OK, so I panicked a bit. I flew out of there, ripped of the mask, raced home, stripped off all my clothes that will later be washed in a hot cycle, and took a shower. Then I crawled into bed, and slept.

Queue lullaby.

6 comments:

  1. Awww, poor thing. I don't blame you one bit. Hope you start to feel better so you don't have to think about going to the doctor again so soon!

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  2. Oh no. And I read your blog. Now I'm going to get it, too. Thanks a lot.

    Here's hoping we all don't die!

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  3. Oh boy. I would have been pretty upset as well.

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  4. SWINE FLU! SWINE FLU! SWINE FLU! AAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!

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  5. I would have so done the same thing. I put toothbrushes in the dishwasher, so you get the picture.

    In fact, I'm wearing a mask and surgical gloves while I write this.

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  6. I live in Reno and 2 of my 3 kids are in daycare, the other in elementary school. The very first thing I did after the announcement, since they hadn't announced WHICH daycare yet, was to call and make sure it wasn't the one we use.

    Even though there hasn't been a serious case in the US yet, it still would have been too close to home if it was one of my kids' classmates.

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