The days following my 40th birthday were filled with a lot of excitement. I can now scratch surviving a hurricane off of my bucket list. In the interest of full disclosure, it was a tropical storm by the time it hit where I live in Georgia, but it was still a little freaky. On the plus side, my friends and family brought wine – lots and lots of wine as a birthday present for me. So in the event that I found myself trapped in house with three tiny humans and no electricity, I had wine to keep me sane.
After all of the family members who came for my birthday left and the hurricane passed, I finally had time to breath and play catch up on things I didn’t have a chance to take care of while they were in town. And that’s when it happened. One evening I noticed that my ears and throat ached. The next morning, everything hurt. My head hurt, my face hurt, my sinuses hurt, and I felt like I had a glob of mucus lodged in my throat. I had chills and was sweating at the same time. But, I did not have a fever – which was weird. Leaving fate up to the internet, I entered my symptoms into the search bar and learned that I had early onset Alzheimer’s.
She came into the examination room, looked at my chart and then started her exam by checking the lymph nodes in my neck.
“Ooh!” She pulled her hands away and stepped back. “Those are really swollen. Open your mouth and say ah.”
“Ah.”
“Yikes. That’s gross.”
“What’s gross?” Are doctors supposed to say stuff like that?
“Your tonsils. They’re so swollen they’re rubbing together.”
“So I’m healthy. That’s awesome.”
“Actually it means your really sick.”
Mental note: She does not speak sarcasm.
“I think you have Strep but it could also be mono. I’ll need to take a culture and some blood work to be sure.”
Thirty minutes later the nurse was in the room about to give me three shots for Strep. The first shot was an antibiotic. The other two were steroids to ease the swelling of my tonsils…I think. I’m not really sure what the steroids were for but she said they would help so I took them.
The antibiotic was injected in my arm.
“Okay,” the nurse began. “These next two shots go in your rear.”
“Excuse me?”
“Your butt, dear. The steroids have to be injected in your butt.”
I was freaking out. Not a lot. Just a little. Why? Because the first thing I thought of when she told me where those injections had to go was, “God, I hope my butt is clean.” The last thing I needed was for toilet paper crumbs to fall out of my gorge while I was dropping my drawers.
I think I’m going to file that section of commentary under Things I never thought I’d hear a medical professional say….or anyone else for that matter. I’m pretty sure she intended it to be a compliment. I definitely did not ask.
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