That Wasn't Really the Direction I Saw The Day Going...

I've been sick for about three weeks, but yesterday was the worst, and I knew I needed to do something about it. I haven't found a doctor out here yet, so I decided to head out to an Urgent Care. I've spent a lot of long days at Redmond Urgent Care, either getting my high school physical, or looking for a reason to miss a couple days of school. In college, I even went to our school's version of an Urgent Care when I broke my toe. In Redmond, you always bring a book. It doesn't matter how early you show up, there is always a wait - usually over 2 hours. So, on Friday as I headed to the Urgent Care after work around 1:30, I was definitely expecting to walk in there and have to wait for at least a couple of hours. Wrong - there were only 2 people in front of me, and one of them was actually just waiting to get her prescriptions - it was about a 20 minute wait! Although, had I known what was ahead, I may have wanted to have a longer wait.

As I went back there, the nurse took my height and weight (how rude) and my blood pressure, pulse and temperature. I'm not quite sure why, but every time I see the blood pressure machine, my heart starts to beat like crazy. I think I have a fear that the thing will only keep getting tighter and tighter until my arm pops off. I'm such a wimp. The lady came back over to check the machine when it was done, and her eyes kind of looked like this:



My pulse was through the roof, so I explained to her my insane fear of blood pressure machines, and she left the pulse machine on a little longer so it could level out. We got to chatting a bit, and it turns out she lived in Sammamish, WA for 10 years - her kids even went to Margaret Mead, which is very close to McAuliffe! Small world... She left because she hated the weather, I told her I wanted to leave because I hated the weather here. I don't think she liked me very much. The nurse took a swab of my throat to check for strep, although she told me it looked pretty bad in there. Gee, thanks - I thought so too!

Next up was the doctor. He walked in, asked me the standard questions about how I was feeling, and told me that my swab came back positive for strep. Yay. He told me he also wanted to give me a chest x-ray because of the cough I've had for 3 weeks. Yay again. He also told me that they would give me something here at the doctor's office to help with the crazy throat pain. If only I had known...

About 5 minutes later, the nurse came back in with a syringe. She told me she was going to give me the shot first, then we would go get those chest x-rays done. I said to her "Oh man, I really hate shots." to which she replied, "Oh, well you're really going to hate this one, because the shot is going in your butt." In my WHA!?!?

I flipped onto my stomach, got really light-headed, tried to figure out any option that would result in my not having a needle in my ass, and was trying to make jokes to ease the moment. I told you this nurse hated me - I think she was getting quite a thrill out of my anxiousness over the butt shot. Needle inserted. Not bad at first. Not bad when she took it out. But by the time I stood up to button up my dignity, holy butt pain. It hurt so bad.

Everything after that is sort of a blur. I got the chest x-rays from the x-ray machine circa 1972, waited for the x-rays to develop while sitting on the good cheek, talked to the doctor as he wrote out my prescriptions, sat in the waiting room to pay, called my mom on the way home to explain the events of the day, and got my prescriptions filled at good ol' CVS.

I can't say that anyone would really prepare for a butt shot to start their weekend, but I can honestly tell you that it still hurts. But I guess it worked - it took the focus off of my throat.