Archives from 2002-2006

Nov

6

Stewing

Hey, thank you for the ideas, suggestions, and anecdotes with regards to ongoing childhood mystery ailments. Naturally, Riley seems perfectly fine today, excepting a brand NEW symptom: a husky, scratchy voice that sounds like the IT’S LINDSAY voiceover on The Soup.

I’m considering whether to visit the pediatrician today, or go on Monday when it’s theoretically possible they’ll have some flu vaccinations available, which they are not scheduling but if you happen to be there for unrelated reasons they might give your kid a shot.

*holds head, rocks back and forth in the corner, eats fistful of dog hair*

Speaking of the flu, JB’s brother called last night to tell JB he’d driven himself to the hospital with a 104 degree fever, got diagnosed with H1N1, and was sent home with Tamiflu.

There are a few things that seem notable to me about this, like how he actually got diagnosed and even got medication, despite being an otherwise perfectly healthy adult (I thought they were only giving out Tamiflu for high risk people?). I wonder just how much treatment fluctuation there is between different locations, like whether it’s easier to get care in a small city where Joe lives as opposed to our crowded Seattle-area population.

But I’m particularly struck by the fact that he actually got in the car and headed to the emergency room to have himself checked out. If it were me, I know exactly what I would have done: I would have laid on the couch boiling in my own juices, while pecking on my phone in order to complain on TWITTER about how I was probably dying and wasn’t that just my luck.

There’s a lesson here, I think, but it’s, like, really hard to stop moping about all my PROBLEMS long enough to ponder what it might be.