I think it's finally getting better. I have been sick for a long time. I think I made things worse by continuing to go to work, thinking whatever it was would eventually go away. It didn't go away. It just got worse and worse.
Tomorrow I am supposed to return to work on the condition that I make it through a 24-hour period without any fever. The timer is set.
This experience has really made me realise just how much trouble our healthcare system is in. When I finally broke down and went to the doctor, we had to go to a walk-in clinic because it was a weekend and the regular doctor's office wasn't open. Upon arriving at the clinic we were told it would be about a two hour wait to see someone. Enough time, it turned out, to go back home for a nap, and return just in time. It was fortunate Shawn convinced the receptionist to let us do this; if I'd been required to sit in that crowded waiting room for two hours I probably would have given up and gone home unseen.
The doctor ordered a chest x-ray, which required going to another location. Fortunately, this place wasn't nearly as busy but the experience was strange. After providing the proper requisition forms and papers, I was moved from the main waiting room to a back room where I was sent into a cubicle and told to take off everything from the waist up and don the paper gown that was waiting for me. I was wearing pajama bottoms and a sweatshirt, so after completing this request I looked like a little swami. Having done so, I was expected to go and sit in the back waiting room with other patients who were also wearing paper gowns!!! It was totally bizarre. Because I was feverish and weak I didn't put up any fuss and got x-rayed quickly and sent home, but I think if I'd been feeling better I would have been rather distressed by having to lounge around in a paper shirt in front of other people. I might have argued or made trouble. I guess it worked out better that I was too sick to fight it - but the fact remains that someone should tell these people that their system is insane.
I'm missing Shawn. He's been home taking care of me for a long time, but it's not only the excellent nursemaid service that I'm missing. I've become one of those women who gets lonely when she's alone. Pitiful. I hope it's just the germs and that I can recapture my independence when the antibiotics are done.
It's snowing again today. We have an enormous amount of snow again and no one has been outside to shovel because of Pneumonia and the Nursemaid. I feel sad, I think, that it's still winter. And sad that it's going to be spring, that the seasons are changing and I am still feeling the way I do. I should be changing too.
This is the second time I have asked for an illness in someone else's place, and the second time it seems to have happened. Only the first time I felt as though I was helping because she was still alive, and maybe it really could have eased her suffering if I was taking some of it inside me. This time it's only made me feel terrible to think this is probably how he felt the whole time he was dying.
I really hope I can go back to work tomorrow. Being home like this, too sick to work but too well to sleep all day... leaves nothing. It's depressing watching the snow come down and hearing the television drone about Britney Spears on every channel as though her hair was of some kind of international import.
I wish I was tired enough to sleep.
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2 comments:
I've never waited less than 2 hours for a doctor, even with an appointment. Healthcare is ludricrous. I think that only the French get it right (and that's complete hearsay, not having experienced it myself.)
I'm sorry you're sick.
I go through phases of being lonely simply because I'm alone. A lot of it has to do with habit...if I see Josh every waking minute for a few days, I get nervous and jittery when he's gone. (I am totally codependent.)
I think being sick makes me depressed. It's the utter dependency and lack of dignity in having to have someone dole out your medications for you because you're too feverish to stand up and cross the room for a glass of water. Or something.
Or maybe I adapt to dependency too easily - and when I'm required to rejoin the real world it's a shock to the system.
You're right. It's codependency. But... is it really if S doesn't feel that way too? I think I'm alone in my neurosis.
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