Finding Joy in Snarkville

…I’m not dying of Ebola, yet. I actually decided, after a coughing fit that left me sitting on the floor breathless and five days of a sore throat that woke me up at night, to go to the doctor. Now, I’m NOT the run to the doctor every time I have a sniffle kind of girl. In fact, I would much rather see my doctor along the lines of once per year and we go our merry ways.

However, I have the plague, with a side of Ebola, so I thought maybe, just maybe a strep test was in order. I was 90% sure I didn’t have strep, but I wanted to make sure that I didn’t need any of the good drugs (you know the cough syrup with codine kind) to pull through. So, I call the doctor yesterday morning and ask if he has any open appointments. Shockingly his office person called me right back and offered me pretty much my pick of the day.

So I rush in and tell the doctor, I just wanted to double check that I didn’t have strep and perhaps this is just the common cold. About the time I sat down, I had this weird feeling come over me. That feeling that says, “You really aren’t sick enough to take up this doctor’s time.” I began to apologize. Seriously, I kept starting every sentence with “I’m sorry, I know this isn’t a big deal and I’m probably ok with OTC stuff, I just wanted to double check…” I could not stop. I felt like I was seriously wasting his time and putting myself firmly on the “this woman is a whack-job” list.

He tries to take a swab of my belly button via my throat and we wait. When he stepped out of the room, I attempted to re-group and tell myself he wasn’t busy since he had all these appointments open and it would ok. So, we wait for 7 and a half minutes for the results. We chat a bit. Then it hits me — those random other little things that I knew I needed a prescription for but couldn’t bring myself to call because it was so not worth a same day appointment — so I say, all cool like, “Hey, since we are waiting anyway and can we chat about this and this too. I would have never made an appointment special to talk about them, but since I’m here and you are here and we have to wait anyway.” And guess what — it wasn’t a total waste of my (and his) time. I got the prescriptions and we chatted a bit.

My test was negative, thus I don’t have ebola or strep — the results of the plague are still out. As I was walking out with a suggestion of salt water and OTC cold meds to make me more comfortable, I say, “thank you so much. I’m sorry I wasted your time and appreciate you seeing me.”

He says, “It’s ok, you caught us on a really slow day, so it was fine.”

“Well, good I’m glad I didn’t keep you from anything else; but still I’m sorry for interupting your lighter work day.”

“No a problem at all. And it all works out, we don’t always like the slower days — gotta keep an eye on the bottom line.”

Then I stopped feeling so bad. He was being paid to see me, it didn’t matter that it was pretty much a pointless visit. Thus, I got a prescription I needed and we can all move on.

So, if I don’t have ebola, plague or strep, what are we thinking, bird flu?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 17th, 2007 at 9:57 am and is filed under The Queen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.