Encore

So, I have Strep again.

Yeah, I have Strep again, because, I guess, one good germ deserves another. The night that ABC stings me, I find myself at home, on the phone with Michael from work, dissolved into hysterical, gulping-for-air tears, saying how I didn't want to go to jail, saying how bad I felt that he had to contact my boss during his father's wake, Michael saying it was all going to be okay and did I want to join his family and see the new Woody Allen movie. May the non-existant gods bless him.

That night I lay down and got up later with a sore throat. That's the one that took me to the MJH Emergency Room again. (Yeah, it drove. Tee hee.) That's the one the ER doc had a negative Strep test for and had thus labelled "a virus". That's the one that deviously hid under the "virus" label until a second test at the general practitioner's last Friday revealed it to be none other than our old enemy, the Evil Prof. Strep! Guess that's why they do follow up appointments.

Fortunately, I'd hit this one early, so the pain and swelling didn't get as bad as the first time. Also, thinking that it was a virus, I'd already been pumping myself full of Ibuprofin for days by the time I made my fated doctor's visit. This time they've put me on stronger anti-biotics, and the size of these pills! I think the next level up probably looks like my thumb. But they seem to be doing the job, thank goodness.

And thanks to my neighbor for introducing me to the wonders of Chloroseptic! I don't know what it is. Maybe it's because I (ha ha) don't really get sick that much. Maybe it's because I don't like to take meds. Maybe it's because I grew up having headaches that aspirin seemed to do nothing to relieve, but I'm just really ignorant/disbelieving of the various over-the-counter cures for what ails ya. So what a shock when my neighbor gave me these ancient, past due date, tiny little throat strips, and it was, "Bam! Take that throat pain!" And, "Oh, you're that annoying spot right under the back teeth. Bwam!" And, "You're that twinge on the side of the tongue. K-Bwam!!" It was a beauty to behold.

So I feel loads better now. Yesterday, I began swallowing normally without pain and swelling. Last night I even slept more than two hours at a time and woke up without having to attend yet another production of The Phlemtastics (throat disease's longest running musical).

So this Strep ... not as bad as the last. Ill-timed, yes. (Missed a day of work (a Friday at that), which I can make up Monday.) But lower on the Pain Scale, which, for better but probably mostly for worst, continues, in a very profound way, to be the scale that means the most to me. Now, if I only had health insurance.

When I am feeling poorly,
Am achey and all sorely,
And have bugs that must be cured.

I could pay for my treatment
While affording feeling decent
If I only was insured.

That's right. Blue Cross/Blue Shield of VA can't seem to convince its bureaucracy that we convinced them to start covering me in September of '05 rather than having convinced them to drop me. Of course, how they could drop me when the whole point was their insistence that they hadn't accepted me, duuuhhhI don't know. I just know that despite the fact that they are gleefully accepting my payments (that, the bureauucracy seems to be able to do quite well) they're not covering my meds or ER visits or presumably any of this stuff. Boy do I wish Chloroseptic had a strip for the type of pain that they are.