going to work

Today I am going to work. I woke up about an hour ago, ready to take some more medicine and while I will still be taking my miracle drugs that allow me to breathe, talk and not cough, I will go to work and infect my co-workers.

Ok, it is not my intention to infect my co-workers at all. I really do not want anyone else to catch this horrible thing. Unfortunately, my husband said he thinks he might be getting it. But since he works for 4 days a week, his weekend starts after tonight and he'll be able to rest for 3 or so days.

I am very glad that he will be able to do that, since I had to take a few days off after a not-so-wonderful sick weekend.

The worst thing about being sick, I believe, is my inability to eat solid foods. I love food, I adore food, unfortunately when my body is sick, my body decides to reject food and say "no". This is not just a polite "no" but an emphatic "no". I get to eat soup for almost a week, with saltine crackers, and not even the slightest bit of color in my drink - just water please. Is this what the doctor ordered? No.

Actually, the doctor did no such ordering at all. The doctor did not help me. I am mad at the doctor. The doctor I went to is not our primary care physician actually, she works in the same building and is a *new* doctor they brought in. I noticed this when we walked in, it was posted on the door: "Welcome Dr. So-and-So and Dr. Something-or-Other" blah blah blah.

So I went into the new doctors office that we are going to. The doctor that my husband and his family has been seeing for ages was unavailable yesterday because, being a good doctor he is booked. The doctor I used to go to when I was still living in California were all very personal. They always asked me how I was doing, without sarcasm. They always asked me how things were going, they always asked me about my symptoms as if it were a story - not a grocery list.

The doctor I saw yesterday, I could tell, just came out of medical school. She was looking for a way out of my appointment, she did not want to see me. I was just another patient, someone to be handled, not someone to be taken care of. It was a really big turn-off.

I told my husband about this, oh I ranted and raved on the car ride home, he was with me the entire time I was in there with her and he agreed (at least as far as I could tell) that she was not like the doctor I was supposed to see and she was not like any of the other doctors he had been to either.

Where do professional schools teach their professionals to deal with people? In my experience, there are courses on how to deal with people, or at least professional opportunities onto which you learn how to be personable. Or maybe it is just socialization. Maybe, just maybe, this doctor felt as though I was there frivolously - I should not have been there. I was there because I had flu-like symptoms. I know there is nothing she can do for me. But I feel SICK, worse than any flu I have ever had before. So I am thinking, maybe I mis-diagnosed myself and maybe I have something else. Maybe all of the things I read on WebMD are wrong or misleading or I did not read the right articles. There are tons of things I could have had, millions of things that could be wrong with me. But does she check for any of them? No.

What are your symptoms? Then you give a grocery list of symptoms.

Vomitting? No.
Cough? Yes.
Sneezing? Yes.

Etc., etc., and the list goes on.

Not necessarily in that order either. They did keep asking me if I had thrown up. They did not ask me anything about the length of my period which was a record 2 days. They did not ask me how long it had been since my LAST period before that (almost 8 weeks) and how often it normally is (usually every 6 weeks almost on the dot).

As you can tell, even though I went to the doctor and even though I am taking miracle medication (that I *myself* (Qualifier: my husband was there) went to the store to buy and decided for *myself* which one I was going to get) that does make me feel better, I am still going to work an unhappy camper, with less and less to be happy about the more and more I get better because my doctor DID NOT HELP ME RECOVER AT ALL.

To some degree, I almost feel as though they should say when you call to set up an appointment, "if you think you have a flu or a cold, we cannot help you and you should consider waiting until you have something better to come by for before we see you". Maybe that will build their customer base with customers that they would like to help.

Grrrrrr... *breathes* Ok now. I feel much better. *Cough*.