I haven't posted a thing here in three weeks, and this time I cannot blame the children for it. Nope, this time, I place the blame squarely on the pneumonia that I somehow came down with at the end of April.
For two weeks, I ran a low-grade fever, had a cough, had no appetite and felt such low energy that it was difficult to climb out of bed every morning. During this time, Brian was at constant swine-flu updates. By the end of the first week, he started telling me to go to the doctor. Neither one of us believed that the H1N1 virus (as it came to be known by the media, due to fears that pigs were somehow going to be offended that a disease was named after one of their bretheren), but we knew something was up...or rather, Brian felt that something wasn't quite normal; I kept insisting that it was just a normal cold and that it was running the same way that any cold I have developed over the last three or four years had gone.
About ten days in, just to make my husband happy (read: get him to stop nagging me), I went to a walk-in clinic near our house. I had to take Emma and Jamie with me, and we sat in the waiting room for an hour, while I hacked into my sleeve and the other patients eyed me warily. The twins were none to happy to have to sit and do nothing, and kept demanding that we leave because "they're not even calling you in, Mama!"...I was just about to give in to their demands (and was thinking up ways to explain my leaving to Brian) when my name was called.
Emma, Jamie and I walked into the examining room, and I had them wait there while I made a two minute run to the bathroom (8 glasses of water in less than 6 hours will do that to you)...when I got back to the room, we waited for another five minutes or so and then the doctor came in. I explained to her about the fever, the weird sensation in my left ear, about how I didn't think it was swine flu, and that while neither my husband (the reporter, for those of you new here) nor I thought it was the virus, I thought I should get checked out (especially since I am also a type 1 diabetic).
I was asked if I had come in contact with anyone who had it, and I said, truthfully, "I don't know."
"Well," said the doctor. "Then you don't have it."
Which is lovely to hear, but how on earth would she know? I mean, if I didn't know if I'd been in contact with anyone who had swine flu, and the media was rampant with reports of how easy it was to catch it, how the hell would she be able to say definitively, no?
Moving right along, she listened to the top part of my lungs and told me that I had a cold. She gave me a prescription for a puffer (not sure if there's a more technical term for it) and that was it.
I saw her for less time than it took me to go pee.
She didn't look in my ears, check my temperature, take blood, do a swab...nothing but the puffer prescription.
I left, Emma and Jamie in tow, thinking, man, I should just have gone to see Dr. Barry. (He being our family physician, where there is also a walk-in clinic, but they had said they were extremely busy that particular day, and Barry wasn't in anyway)
That was on Tuesday.
By Friday morning, I still wasn't feeling any better, despite the puffer. (And in fact, I think I may have been slightly allergic to it, since every time I took the prescribed dose, I ended up feeling so dizzy I couldn't stand straight) I had an appointment with a different doctor at our regular doctor's office, and so when I got there, I asked about the walk-in clinic and found out that since I was the first one in the office that morning, I would be able to see someone without having to wait for hours on end.
After my first appointment, I sat in the waiting room for five minutes and then saw a lovely young lady (who I thought looked way too young to be a doctor, until she generously showed me the many grey hairs sprouting from the top of her head)...she looked in my ears, checked my temperature, and listened to my entire lungs...and lo, and behold, what she discovered was that I had fluid in my ears (hence the strange sensation there), a low grade fever (nearly two full weeks after the original onset of symptoms) and fluid in the lower regions of my lungs.
The diagnosis?
Atypical pneumonia...aka "walking pneumonia".
I was given a prescription for antibiotics (which worked very well, thank you very much) and told to keep using the puffer.
Without being told, I also learned that I should #1: trust my husband when he tells me something's wrong, and B: never go to that other walk-in clinic again.
There's tons more that's gone on this month that has kept me from updating here...but I'll let you in on that tomorrow...
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