An apple a day

I cannot believe this sickness. Almost two weeks on I'm still coughing. My voice could still pass for Rod Stewarts' and my lungs are still producing materia that even James Cameron would have the decency NOT to feature on his films. 

Yet, when a week ago I had to drag myself out of the bed to see a doctor I was referred to a cheerful nurse who couldn't have been more than 12. All he did was to send me home with an extension on my sick leave. No drugs, no tests, NOTHING. I would have done a better job staying in and diagnosing myself!

I'm no stranger to that- after years of ER and Chicago Hope and Grey's Anatomy I have fooled myself into thinking that I have some kind of an understanding of this field. I'm dying to have someone collapse next to me on a bus stop just so that I can cut their throat open and stick that tube from inside a pen into there, you know, as emergency tracheotomy. I've seen people do it on TV, so how hard can it be?

After all, that is how I learn how to cook. No, not by slitting people's throats open (I'm fairly certain that sort of behaviour would get you in trouble everywhere in the world. Well, Spain anyway. In Iran, Yemen, Afghanistan it seems to be a national sport) but by watching those cheffy people do it on TV. Now I could clean a squid with my eyes closed.

Real life medics on the other hand have always failed to impress me. I tend to get bronchitis at least once a year (and yet it isn't enough for me to quit smoking!). They do nothing and always just send me home with a week's sick leave. Once I had it for three weeks and it had pretty much infected everything it could find in my chest. I was coughing blood and unable to speak. And what did they do? NOTHING. They just kept sending me home week after week with another week added on my sick leave. 

Eventually I had to throw a tantrum to convince them to actually treat me. And let me tell you, that is a hard one to stage when you're deprived of your most lethal weapon of mass destruction: voice and the verbal arsenal that comes with it. When you're there, mute, throwing your arms around, looking angry... Really. You just end up looking like an idiot.  I mean, imagine Gilmore Girls and their machine gun-like dialogue delivery in a  silent film? You wouldn't buy tickets to go see that one, even if it had Madonna doing a special guest appearance. But hey ho, drugs I got and the voice was back in 3 days.


Other encounters have left me reeling too. I've yet to find a gynaecologist I'd actually like. One of the ones I've tried to like went to... places even people I did like didn't dare to venture- not even after years of dating.

The discomfort extends to other areas of health care professionals too.  Having to make my way to a pharmacy for that morning after pill I decided to get just in case for that weekend trip was such an embarrassing experience.  First I searched for it through every single aisle in vain. On the other hand- now I know exactly where to go for incontinence pads. And lube. (I did not even know they sell that kind of things in pharmacies. I mean, what kind of a perv goes to a place like that to get lube? Why can't they shop at a seedy sex shop like normal people?!)

Anyway... there was me, thinking I was doing the responsible thing but no. Eventually I had to seek assistance from one of those white jackets just loitering there and I was told to go to the prescriptions department. They look I got (or was it just in my head? No it couldn't have. That would just make me neurotic. And I'm not one. I mean, would you be reading a neurotic blog? What do you think it says about you?) instantly reduced me feeling like a skanky ho.

It was like having a spotlight projected on me with a circus director following me around with a loud-speaker. "There goes a hussy! She sleeps around! Doesn't take any precautions! She has diseases even Channel 4- documentaries won't tell you about! She probably just had sex! Probably with your husband!" 

Then, at the counter I was given a speech by another 12-year-old pharmaceutical professional.

And after all this hassle, did I even need the pill? Hah.