Last week, I stayed home from work on Friday, feeling miserable.
When Maura got home from daycare on Friday, she went to her room and crawled into bed. I went upstairs ten minutes later to check on her and found that she was dead asleep. She hadn’t put on a movie, she hadn’t taken off her clothes…and her little face was flushed. I knew as soon as I saw her that she was sick, so we geared up, left the dog with Nick, and ventured out into the rain to go get her checked out.
The obvious solution was the Take Care clinic instead of the nearby Walgreens. It was about six when we left the house, and the clinic is usually open until eight (but doesn’t take new patients after seven thirty). It seemed easy enough.
When we got there, though, it was mobbed. There must’ve been thirty people, about half of them hoping to get flu shots (most of them didn’t; the clinic ran out shortly after we got there) and half of them hoping to see the doctor. The computer system was overloaded and not allowing new patients, so the nurses were processing people manually, first come, first served. So we joined the line of people and started to wait.
Ten minutes after we got there, they announced that they were out of flu vaccines (both types) and if you weren’t already registered, you couldn’t get the shot. They expect more, they said, in mid-November.
They continued to give shots to people already registered, and continued adding more people to see the doctor. After about an hour, we were told that they were all full and couldn’t fit in any more patients.
Out in the car, I Googled for a local urgent care and found one about fifteen minutes away. Urgent care costs more than double what a basic visit costs, but Maura was pretty pathetic, and I couldn’t take two steps without gasping for air. Urgent care it was.
We got there around seven thirty. There were maybe half a dozen people in the waiting room. Maura slumped in a chair while I started filling out the pages of paperwork, several pages for each of us. Around eight fifteen we were taken to a room, where a nurse checked our temps (mine: 100.4; Maura’s: 101.7) and blood pressure. Then another room.
After a while, the doctor came in. After a five-minute examination and a nasal swab, I was diagnosed with a chest infection, Maura with “probably the H1N1″. Insurance companies won’t pay for flu typing, so the doctor did a quick test to see if it was influenza A or influenza B, then made an educated guess. I was warned that I would probably have the flu in a few days, as well, since I was already sick and it’s an opportunistic disease.
The nurse called in prescriptions for Tamiflu, paid our copays, and headed out. At about quarter after nine, we were in the car, headed back to Walgreens for the prescriptions. Only they found out once we were there that they didn’t have the right dosage for Maura. They offered to order it, which would get it to us in “a few days”. Obviously that wouldn’t work, since it’s only effective if started within a day or two. After some debate, they agreed to call around and see if another Walgreens had it.
Lucky us, someone did. Unlucky us, it was 25 minutes away. When we got there, the woman waiting on us couldn’t get her computer to work. After four attempts at entering my information, the woman working the counter called her supervisor, who had no problem making the computer work. After about a twenty minute wait, we had Maura’s medication and could head home.
By the time we got home, it was almost eleven, five hours after we originally left the house. And, I remind myself, we were lucky. Lucky because we have health insurance, so we were able to afford to go see someone. Lucky because we have a car and are able to go to four different places to get care. Lucky because I wasn’t missing hours at a second job in order to take Maura to the doctor.
We spent most of the weekend sleeping.