02/10/2005 Posted @ 03:28 PM PD/ST: "That Kind of Day"

I've had a crap day. Not the kind of crap day that involves losing your entire family and life to a tsunami, or the kind of crap day that involves a tree falling onto your car or losing your job. On the scale of 1 to 10 of crap days (10 being, "My entire life is gone" and 1 being, "I broke a fingernail"), this is a 4.5, maybe a full-blown 5.

The cold I brought home from The Wedding is practically gone but I have a persisting sore throat. Noticed it wasn't going away last night, recognized the symptoms and thought, "Ah crap, gotta find a doc now."

The health clinic on campus fit me in right away but, as with the last time I had this infection (over 5 years ago), weren't willing to believe that the "only way" someone can get it definitely was not the way I got it. High stress, lowered immune system resistance; that opens the door for tons of stuff including what I have.

An hour and a half (almost two by the time I walked to the campus bookstore to use the ATM) and a battery of tests later they have ruled out mono, strep, and a whole range of other things. My blood pressure spiked to an all time high causing me to utter a most grown-up word. Triglycerides are high (yeah, lots of sugar in my diet lately). Two people had to do a tag team effort on my veins in order to get enough blood to run a CBC, chem .... blah de blah, the same set of things I had done in December.

Oh, and here's a flyer for the free weight-loss class. We want to do a glucose work-up to check for diabetes and monitor your blood pressure. Thank you very much, not interested in the class, know what to do to lower both my triglycerides and my blood pressure as I have been telling them the entire time I'm there.

Stress .... stress .... stress .... my body finally gave in and caught an infection. That's pretty much the bottom line.

After feeding and bathing Car, I head to my friendly Safeway pharmacy who takes one look at my prescription and does a double take.

"I know," I say. "I asked why she wanted me to take the vaginal suppositories orally. I thought they would taste nasty too." Then they start quoting me prices on the pharmaceutical options I have. If they switch from the suppositories to a liquid suspension, it will be less expensive but not by much and they have to call the doc to get approval. If they change from nystatin to chlortrisomething, the price doesn't change much. Oh, wait ... the office is closed for an hour, we'll call your cell as soon as we get this settled.

I head for a restaurant where I can sit at a table, eat and study (which is what I really need to be doing) for the next hour. I am too tired to be more than annoyed, there just isn't energy to work into a good angry.

The pharmacy calls, they have been okayed to switch to the liquid suspension and quoted the wrong price earlier, it's now about a quarter of the original quote. Thank goddess.

I have an assignment due today and I still haven't finished my letter of intent. But at least I now have a prescription for what ails me.

And what ails me is a little something called "thrush." It's basically a yeast infection in the mouth and only rarely appears in people who are abstinent since it's usually considered an STD. I had it several years ago and that doc was equally insistent that it was sexually transmitted. Really, unless my mouth is running away from my body and doing things I don't know about while I'm asleep, there is no way I could have gotten this through sex.

And it burns me that when I say I don't want/need a medical test that it keeps getting pushed at me. I am in the lowest risk group for HIV among adults, I already know I don't have it and I don't practice any of the risky behaviours so stop telling me I really should take it, as well as the one for other STD's. You can not believe what I tell you about how I got thrush but it is still my right to decline tests. I have enough stress in my life without having to battle health care providers as well.

Geeeesh!