in which the author seeks help

Since I was still suffering from the same symptoms I reported last week (albeit in a lesser quantity), I finally made a doctor’s appointment. Grr. I was lucky, though, that my GP could see me at such short notice.

Her words after looking up my nostrils: “How do you breathe with all this congestion?”

She wrote me a script for an antibiotic, which seems to be the universal Band-Aid for symptoms that could be attributed to any number of specific illnesses. I wanted to say: “Hey, Doc, you think you could put a name to what I’ve got?”

But I was good, hardly sarcastic at all, and I consider this an improvement. I’m not exactly known for tact in the doctor’s office.

I remember a few years ago, when I had to get an ultra sound and two MRIs. The ultrasound was the kind where you have to drink six bottles of water beforehand, so when I got to the office I was already in a pissy mood because the desire to urinate was stronger than I’d ever experienced before.

They made me wait 30 minutes (“I’m sorry, ma’am, we have a backlog”), and they whisked me from the ultrasound machine to the MRI room. They let me use the bathroom, but by the end of the first 45-minute MRI, I had to go again.

The nurse says, “I’m sorry, Sam, but we really don’t have time. Let’s just get this last test over with, then you can go.

And I’m like, “No, I think I’m just going to go now.”

We argued for about five minutes over whether I could be permitted to use the bathroom, at which point I just said: “Look, either you let me use the facilities or I pee right now, on this machine, and ruin a multi-million-dollar piece of equipment.”

She looked at me funny and said tentatively, “You wouldn’t do that.”

I said, “My husband’s in the waiting room. You go ask him if I’d do that.”

To make a longer story a tad shorter, she let me go to the bathroom.

Anyway, I hope I’ll be feeling better now that I’ve spent $25 on a doctor’s visit and $10 for a generic prescription. Let’s hope.