Cough, Cough

After one week of feeling lousy and getting worse, and prompted by media accounts of new cases of Swine Flu, I called the Advise Nurse of my clinic and gave her my symptoms.

She advised me to take long, hot showers, and drink hot tea. Oh, and also to breathe in the tea fumes. She also made an appointment for me with my doctor the next morning.

I am wayyy beyond tea fumes at this point. This morning, my wheezing tunes woke me up. Several times.

So, Dr. Heath said I either had bronchitis or pneumonia. She listened to my back several times, and said she could hear things in the lower right lung, and then she mentioned something about the lung being collapsed. So, half an hour later, I was sitting in the x-ray place on Telegraph - yes, the very one I go each year to get those lovely but painful mammograms.

A woman wheezed her way into the seat across from me when I sat down. Her husband stormed in a minute afterwards and bellowed at her, "Give the man your paper!" After fussing with her for several minutes, she not responding, he snatched it out of her hand and gave it to the clerk. When I got to the window, I watched the clerk stamp STAT on my paperwork in big, red letters.

Gosh, I could get a stamp like that! I could mark everything medical. "URINE SAMPLE NEEDED. STAT!"

I was shown to the change room, and told yada yada yada, yeah, I know the drill. While I was sitting there, waiting for the x-ray tech to call me, the man next to me, who really didn't want to give me the seat next to him, was really non-plussed about being in a hospital gown with his pants sitting next to him. So he got up and wandered around, carefully holding the gown behind him. I should've told him that he could've placed another gown on backwards so that he'd be fully covered - like so many of us mammogram patients have learned - but I didn't know what reaction I'd get.

The x-ray itself, all 3, was uneventful. I didn't have to take the gown off, so I wonder why they couldn't have just shot the x-ray through my shirt and bra? If it goes through skin AND hospital gown, why can't it go through shirt, bra and skin? You just wonder...

Anyway, after all that, I have bronchitis, not pneumonia.

I went to Long's, where the doctor said they'd call in my prescription inhaler, and wouldn't you know, no call. Maybe they called another pharmacy. Well, that's what direct dial is good for on my cell phone, and why I programmed the number in.

I was hoping I'd get the inhaler before another wheezeful night, but it doesn't look like it.