Cold/flu/infection/misc illness sucks.

I've been out of the office for the past two days with miserable flu-like symptoms. Aches, pains, fatigue that keeps me bedridden. A cough that makes me feel like someone's pounding into my chest with a meat mallet. 800mg of Ibuprofen staggers the pain for a few hours but then it comes back.

I usually let these things ride themselves out, but my girlfriend finally convinced me to go to the express care clinic today or otherwise she wouldn't come visit this weekend. I go in, and they make me wash my hands with the antibacterial hand sanitizer (which does nothing for viral diseases, but whatever), and wear one of those surgical masks. So I tie the mask on, recalling an episode or two of House when the team has to go see a patient that is so bad off that they have to sit in a clean room with no contact to any kind of foreign particles. I sit in the corner of the waiting room feeling like a leper or some kind of undesirable while kids and elderly people come in for flu shots, perfectly healthy. Everyone stares. Little kids laugh in my direction.. but that might be because I'm sitting under the TV and there's a Clifford the Big Red Dog program playing.

I'm there for an hour waiting while people file in and out. Finally I get called in, then more waiting while the PA comes in. He's a nice looking little Jewish guy with the respectable name Joel ***man. He seems nervous somehow, like he's not exactly sure what to say. As a result I feel this weird dynamic shift in our conversation, where he's trying to be the authority but he's not sure how exactly to do it... and it takes me back to when I first started working on people's computers at the repair shop in Taylorville. I've never been the best speaker and I find myself stumbing over words more often than not... and I was still in college and I was dealing with customers that were a lot older than me. Not necessarily better spoken (this was Taylorville after all). But it took me back I kinda sympathized with the guy. He seemed nice enough.

He gives me all the standard checkup stuff.. listen to the breathing, check the nodes, look down the throat and up the nose. I get the sense that this isn't all that difficult to do, giving people a standard checkup. You just need to know what to look for and what to listen for. But I'm sure this guy makes more bank than I probably ever will, and he's just starting out. He leaves, tells me a nurse will be in to do a nasal swab. The nurse comes in, a tall blonde dude in a surgical mask, a foot long cotton swab, and a terrible sense of humor. "I'm gonna stick this up your nose! Har har har!" A rather invasive few seconds later, and the test is done, and he leaves. Another hour passes. Joel comes back and tells me the flu test is negative, and all I've got is some upper respiratory infection. A week of Z-PAK, Clarinex, and pushing fluids to get the little buggers out of my system.

As I'm writing this I'm definitely feeling better, partially because of the medication but also because I know I dodged the H1N1 insanity. But really, people.. it's just the flu. And it's been around before.

So yeah, the doctor's visit today was just about as anticlimactic as this update probably is. Sorry for stringing you along. But I thought it was kind of amusing along the way.