Somehow they seem nicer when you're not sick.
The woman behind the counter slapped the sign-in sheet and a pen on top of the counter without even looking up from her computer. I signed Jonathan and I in, slipped my face mask on and stumbled into the waiting room with 15 other bleary-eyed, feverish patients.
"Mumble. Mumble. Mumble. Garble."My ears are stuffed. Did that woman just call my son's name? He hasn't been here before. Maybe they need his information.
"I'm sorry, did you say Jonathan?"
She looks up at me, expression hovering between bored and annoyed.
"I said 'Looouiseeee Joooohnnnnson," she clips, dragging out each syllable of the woman's name so I knoooow what an idiiiiioooott I am.
"Oh. Sorry."
An hour and a half later we're seated in the examine room. The nurse would smile if she could, but she can't because her face would most certainly crack.
"I guess I can take this off. You've had all your shots right?" I quip, slipping off the mask.
She stares at me, expressionless.
"My shots?" she seems indignant. "No. I'm allergic to the shots."
"Oh." I slip the mask back on, properly shamed into obedience.
"So. What's going on with Jonathan today?" she types hard onto the keyboard and doesn't look up.
In my feverish state I verbally wander between Jonathan's symptoms and my own.
She looks at me out of the corner of her red glowing eyes and I think I see horns pushing up through the mounds of curls on top of her head.
"I can only do.one.patient.at.a.time," she snaps. "Let's stick with Jonathan, shall we?"
I'm ready to walk at this point, but I don't. Because I'm sick. But more importantly because I want to be sure Jonathan isn't sick too. So, I'll put up with the curt behavior of our "health care professionals."
She seems to loosen up a little, but leaves the room without a good-bye or a "the doctor will be with you in a moment." Her bedside manner? Yeah, needs a little work.
The doctor is a different story all together. She breezes in with a smile and a concerned, "So, we're not feeling very well in this room are we?"
Soon she's launched into how bad this H1N1 has been hitting everyone and how the symptoms last for so long even after the sickness seems to go away. She is wonderful with Jonathan. He lets her look in his ears, down his throat, and listen to his lungs. She says he's fine.
My lungs are not so clear and she prescribes albuterol for me. We're to keep an eye on Jonathan, stay on top of his fever and mine and that's it. We're done. She prints out my diagnosis and oddly enough it doesn't say H1N1, even though that's what she said it was. Diagnosis? "Flu Syndrome."
Close enough.
She writes me a doctor's excuse for work, not even mentioning what she diagnosed me with, simply saying for "medical reasons" I need to stay home. At least it didn't say "mental reasons."
But I can only stay home a day and a half, not the seven days she wanted. I don't have vacation or sick days left and each day I'm gone I slip further into poverty.
This H1N1 has already cost me a couple hundred dollars; my energy; my sanity; my health; the health of my family (Hubby is now coughing and has the chills and Jonathan is coughing a little too) and my concentration.
Con.cen.traaation. Hee. Hee. That's a funny word.
Did I mention it's fried my brain?
*snort*
Who are you people again?
*Updated to add...does any of this post make sense? Somewhere in the middle I started blacking out.
