Saturday, April 01, 2006

Some medicine can give you Slinky legs

I went to the doctor. I was sick. From what I can gather, everyone in Eugene came down with this. Starts out like a harmless kind of head cold. A little tickle in the back of the throat. Then all hell breaks loose. By Day 10, I thought I was dying. Perhaps that was a little over-dramatic. Perhaps. The doctor came in. Not my regular doctor. I got sick on her day off, so it was one of her cohorts from the same medical group. She came in and said something doctorly like, “OHMYGOD! You don’t look good.”
Now why is it that you can be completely congested. Can’t breathe at ALL and they want to take your temperature by putting a thermometer in your mouth. I almost bit it in half by the time it beeped. I had a temperature, though. NEVER do you finally get to the doctor and have REAL symptoms. Oh sure you can SAY you feel feverish, but you know it comes back at like 97.6 even BELOW normal. But not this time, my friends. I had a FEVER!
I also had a nasty sinus infection, ear infection and bronchitis. That gave me the trifecta! Sinusitis, bronchitis and otitis. I also lost the sense of smell and taste from early on as well. She said that might take some time to get back. OH to smell garlic again…
She started writing out prescriptions, looked over at me again, tore them up and started writing new ones. She said, “I’m giving you something stronger.”
I took my 3 prescriptions to Bi-Mart on the way home. The lady said the 3 prescriptions was “a lot” and it would take 30 minutes. I asked, “Will you page me in the store when they’re ready? 30 minutes is a long time. I might have wandered all the way to sports equipment by then.” She promised. I walked to the front of the store and got a Pepsi out of the case and wandered around and drank it. Sure enough, “Debbie Newman, please come to the pharmacy.” It couldn’t have been more than 15 minutes. SOON! Help was on the way and I could go home and get medicated and sleep. I walked up to the window and a woman told me my insurance card wasn’t working. I became… whiny. It was… a bit annoying. I convinced her to try a SECOND time and she did and it worked. Dear Lord. I asked again if she would call me when it was ready. She said she would. You know where this is headed.
I wandered the store. I got a basket. I had a giant can of cling peaches and a giant can of beans & bacon soup and a tube of deodorant. I went back to the pharmacy and since there was no one else around I sat on one of the two benches to wait. And wait. I wandered back up front and got a bottled water and went back and sat down. I waited some more. A man with 3 children came and sat down next to me. On my bench. Not on the empty bench behind mine. With me. His first daughter came over. Then his second. They started fighting for his attention. Then a third child. They all but knocked me off the bench. The wife came over and held a package of fake fingertips over the top of me to show to her husband. Mike. She couldn’t get his attention, so she started saying, “Mike… Mike… Mike…” In the meantime one of his daughters had started with, “Dad… Dad… Dad…” I finally LEAPED from my seat like I had been shocked and came down out of the air after turning 180 degrees so I was facing them. They all just stared at me. The man said, “You didn’t have to move.” I was over it by this point and assured him I DID have to move. He said, “We could have moved.” Well then WHY DIDN’T YOU? I went over to the blood pressure stool, turned backwards in it and laid my head down on the pharmacy counter. It had now been one hour and 15 minutes. A woman came up to encourage me to move. I told her, in my dying breath that it had been an hour and 15 minutes and I was NOT moving. She asked for my name and I told her. She turned around, grabbed my medicine and told me it had been there the whole time. I didn’t even have any fight left in me. I bought my medicine and cling peaches, said goodbye to Mike and his family and went home.
Ahhh… drugs. Now the doctor said the dosage for the cough medicine was one to two teaspoonfuls, but for me to take two. Then she said, under her breath, “or three” and smiled at me. I took that as doctor’s orders and took three. I laid down. I was out like a light. At some point in the night I had to get up and go to the bathroom. I became a human slinky. Both my legs were slinkies as I tried to walk across the floors. I was even hearing slinky noises as I would try to put one foot in front of the other. And my legs would come way up like a slinky trying to walk down steps. I made it to the bathroom simply AMAZED at my new superpower. I wasn’t sure how I was going to use it to fight crime, and being that I worked in a scrap yard during the day I would risk the danger of being sucked up by the magnet any time I went outside. But that was okay. My first goal was to come up with JUST the right costume. Cape or no cape? I had a lot to think about. But my immediate concern was getting my new slinky legs to get me back to bed. I alarmed the cats.

Thursday, March 30, 2006

Can you see me?

As my mother writes in all her emails to me... Testing.