Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Go Back In the Water...

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Last week it was. Monday. So there we were, me back from the nursing home all of a week or two, Walter working hard in his role of unofficial caregiver. And the silly MRSA-in-the-arm was fading, but way too slowly for my taste.

One big lesson we learned from this latest health episode was to go outside an institutions' doctors, straight to The Usual Suspects. Yup. A person's real docs? They know your history. Maybe more importantly, they have a working relationship with you. You've worked out whatever needs they may have to play Lord High Doctor. (Or more likely, if they tried, you said, --No thanks-- and found someone new.)

My ID doc is my absolute favorite of all. I admire the stuffing out of that woman. She's not just Infectious Disease, but also board-certified in Internal Medicine, giving her a handle on most everything else that's wrong with me. Gifted. Brilliant. Kind. Tough. Sweet. Funny. Beautiful. What's not to like?

heh!

When I saw her the first week after the Great Escape, I was a mess. Paranoid, after such odd experiences. Way too ill. Dr. C and her staff had done a lot of special rescuing for me. In the end I was a royal pain in the ass of a patient, and I was afraid she was going to tell me to find another doctor, that my high-maintenance needs overburdened her staff beyond any reasonable limits...

Walter thought I was being a bit ridiculous, but you can't talk sense to a crazy person. If it's temporary insanity you just have to wait until it passes.

Dr. C was the very first doc I saw after the Escape. She walked in the door and asked me what happened at Imperial Point, where I'd tried to get admitted to treat the MRSA.

Listening, she frowned and shook her head in gentle disgust. Then she put her hand on my arm and looked me square in the eyes and said: --k. Next time come straight to me. I can give you Vancomycin here. I don't like all this back and forth with phone calls to other doctors and not knowing exactly what's going on with tests and things...

and oh, I almost burst into tears.

[safe safe safe...]

The next Monday that blasted MRSA was still hanging on. Sort of sneering at us. So around midday I called up, explained, and got squeezed in on her next office day, Wednesday.

By the time Walter and I got there, the MRSA was less an issue than this killer cold both of us have. Coughing our lungs out. Air hungry, breathing knives. Sneezing and fevery and room-spinning dizzy and can't-get-out-of-bed drop-dead sick.

HA! We didn't even know for sure what was wrong when we got up in the morning. But every second that passed we were 100 times worse. By midday, with the doc listening to my chest and telling me to breathe, it kept making Walter cough. Which would make me laugh and start hacking and choking again.

Just a good old-fashioned cold.

For which the doctor ordered the following: Go to bed, rest, eat chicken soup, take Tylenol, wait it out.

That's exactly what we've both been doing ever since.

There's something rather comforting about having a perfectly ordinary malady, curable by time and bed rest and chicken soup.
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