that could have gone toward a massage!!

My throat hurts. Yeah, I know the last post started by complaining about a physical ailment. Call me repetitive, but this is my reality right now. Lovely husband and I were talking about the colds that are currently making the rounds in our household, and I made the comment (like an idiot!), "When was the last time I was sick, really sick?" Well, guess what. That aside has come back to bite me in the rear. I've had the cold stuff going on for about a week and a half. As the seasons change, it's apparently become a tradition for me to get a head cold complete with the stuffed up sinuses and the joyful nasal drippings coating my throat each morning. I've come to expect it, so it was no surprise when the symptoms started this time. I deal with it by spending a few extra minutes in the shower each morning trying to clear it all out, essentially sounding like a barking seal hawking loogies on his seal friends. Good times.

Just over a week into this round of the winter-to-spring-cold, my throat started to feel worse. Last Thursday it was really bugging me in the evening. I felt feverish and flushed and nothing tasted like it should. I tried eating Easter chocolate after chocolate to no avail- everything tasted bizarre and just not good. That sucked. I need my chocolate. Come Friday morning, I was simply on autopilot going through the morning routine of getting the big kid off to school, followed by the baby's 4-month check up. As we are walkers, this meant heading straight to the doctor's office after the big kid boarded the bus-- essentially walking out of the house at 8:30 am and returning around 11:30, after a requisite trip to the playground. (As bad as I felt, I simply could not stroll the toddler past her favorite slides without stopping. My effort was rewarded with an earnest squeal of, "YEAH! My playground!!") After we got home, it was straight into the midday routine of diaper changes, lunch, nursing, and naptimes. So, it wasn't until after noon sometime that I realized my throat was really burning and I felt like crap.

I made the mistake of taking a flashlight and plastic IKEA kid's knife (substituting as a tongue depressor- bet they didn't predict that usefulness of their product) into the bathroom to take a glimpse at my throat. I then made the bigger mistake of googling for images of throat infections. At first, I was convinced that I just might have some kind of cancerous tumors all over the back of my tongue. Once I calmed down a bit, I saw that my throat more closely resembled the pictures of strep throat. Many, many pictures of strep throat. Oh crap.

My concern at this point became not my own health, but that of the menagerie of children we have amassed. I have a hard enough time getting through a regular day with three kids. Turn them into three sick kids, and I'm not sure what would happen. So, at 1:00 pm, I try calling the office of our former primary care doctor. (She went out of private practice, but there are other docs in the practice, so I assumed we would just stay with one of them. Not bloody likely now.) Apparently, it is absolutely ridiculous to think that you can get sick on a Friday afternoon and expect to see a doctor, according to the rudest and nastiest receptionist named Peggy. (Oh yeah, I called you out, you mean old lady. I'm sick, I can't censor myself as well. And when you say that the office is closed for an hour for lunch each day starting at noon, and tell people to call back at 1:00 pm, why do you not turn your phones back on until 1:22?? That was me calling over and over and over and over for 22 minutes. Do you all have a stinking clock in your office?!?)

The option I was left with was a local urgent care center/detached ER. For the sake of brevity, I won't go into the details of why it worked out this way, but lovely hubby dropped me off there around 5:45 pm and took the kids to a friend's house for dinner and playtime. Much better than hanging out in an ER with three kids, who would probably annoy the other sick people and pick up more germs than they do on any average day. I brought a book, and I figured I was in for the long haul. I started to feel even crappier sitting there, and I truly regretted not bringing a coat, as the automatic doors kept opening and letting in a draft. (Listen to me, the crabby old lady complaining about the draft. I'm telling you, when I'm sick, I'm just not fun to be around.) I finally got called to the triage nurse around 6:30 pm. I had a low-grade fever, and she confirmed that my throat looked nasty upon inspection. I got to experience one of those lovely throat swabs and went back to the room to wait to be called with results.

Okay, sitting in the waiting room actually wasn't all that bad, excepting for the draftiness and my general malaise feeling. The up sides- I had a book. I had a semi-comfy seat. I didn't have to change any dirty diapers, or correct any misbehavior. This counted as one of the rare occasions I was getting 'me time.' (Sad, I know.) Well, it was all fine until...

Okay, imagine you're entering a very large waiting room that is only about half-full. Maybe not even that. There are rows of seats around the perimeter of the room, and there are segments of rows placed in perpendicular patterns in the middle of the room. There are open seats everywhere. There is one woman sitting at the end of a row of four seats. Now, imagine that you are entering the very large waiting room with your teenage son, who you have brought to the ER because he is having some type of skin problem that is causing him to break out in a rash all over his midsection and his left eye is grotesquely swollen shut. Where are you going to sit? Of course, you'll sit your son down in the seat right next to that lady sitting all by herself, shivering and reading a book in peace, and you'll sit on the other side of your swollen, possibly contagious son. You'll obviously proceed to repeatedly lift his shirt up and lament about the rash that is noticeably spreading even as you speak. You'll apparently be completely oblivious to the many, many open seats that are available that don't even sit near other patients. Of course.

Alright, back to me. I was really getting into my book, but I was also fading fast. I just wanted to lay down. I just wanted to have my name called, be told that I have strep, get handed an antibiotic prescription and be sent on my merry way. Finally, at around 7:30 pm, my name was called in a group of four names, and I followed the oh-so-pleasant-mannered male nurse back through the big double doors and got sent to another room to sit and wait. After a few minutes, a doctor walks in very unceremoniously and proceeds to grace me with his presence for a total of 4 minutes. In this time, he informs me that I do not have strep throat. That I am contagious. That there is nothing I can do about that. That a nurse will come in and give me a paper of care instructions. With one foot out the door, I stop and ask him, "Uh, can you give me more information than that? What is wrong with me?" His answer, "You have a virus." As he turns to leave again, I stop him and ask if the care instructions that are to come will bear in mind that I am breastfeeding. I get a frustrated, "Yes, yes. Just take some ibuprofen."

A nurse comes in and hands me my papers. At least she's got an ounce of personality, unlike the robotic doctor who actually told me to "not get too close" to my children. (Honestly, I laughed out loud at him. He didn't react. I swear.) My instruction papers informed me:

Your throat pain is due to an infection called "Viral Pharyngitis," commonly
known as "Sore Throat." This is a contagious illness. It is spread
through the air by coughing, kissing or by touching others after touching your
mouth or nose. Symptoms include throat pain worse with swallowing, aching
all over, headache and fever. This illness does not require treatment with
an antibiotic.

You've got to be freaking kidding me. I've sat here for two hours, and all I've got to show for it is a sore throat. If the sting of that non-diagnosis wasn't enough, in checking out, I'm informed that our insurance has a $75 ER visit co-pay. Ugh. I was not aware of that. Now, I'm feeling extremely crappy, I've wasted two hours of my life, and I'm out 75 bucks. All I could think to myself was that money is tight, and if I was going to give myself that kind of cash, my dream would be to put it toward a full-body massage. Nope, instead I get a two-hour vacation in germ-central-station. Maybe my eye will start swelling in a few hours.

So, it's been a day since my lovely experience, and my throat is still, how do you say it? Um, I think the medical term is sore. My head hurts. Every bit of food I put in my mouth tastes just wrong. And I spent a good chunk of the afternoon sacked out on the couch amidst my ever-increasing messy house.

Best news yet? The toddler had a fever of 103 degrees this evening. I'm hoping we won't need a medical professional's expertise to diagnose her. Wish us luck.