“Don’t get sick” is good advice, no matter when or where it’s given, but especially now. COVID has made it very difficult to be sick with anything, even a regular old head cold, as I recently experienced.
I see my doctor more often than a lot of people. I have Attention Deficit Disorder, which means every six months, no matter what, I have to see my doctor or no more meds for me. It’s an ugly thing to contemplate, but that is a story for another time.
I Guess You Know Me Well, I Don’t Like Winter
Winter always gets me. I have more migraines in winter than at any other time. I’m not entirely sure of the reason for this, but I blame static electricity and lack of Vitamin D. Also, it’s too bright out. It’s different in the summer, when you have all that thick, delicious humidity diffusing the local star. That I can handle, but the piercing winter glare lances my brain.
I have complaints.
Anyway, I also get sick in other ways. For example, a couple of weeks ago, something went very wrong with my sinuses. It was probably just a cold. There was no fever, no real nasty cough. My sense of smell was normal, which is to say weak, but otherwise present. Also I’m very fortunate that the circumstances of my life do not require me to leave the house much. So I have none of the telltale symptoms of COVID, and little exposure to the outside world and the idiots who live in it. Honestly, my main complaint was that I was feeling it in my ears. For a person who wears headphones all the time as a professional necessity, anything like an ear infection is cause for concern. So I mentioned it to the nurse who weighed me and took my blood pressure.
Symptoms Of Foot-In-Mouth Disease
“Are you experiencing <standard list of COVID symptoms>?” she said.
“Oh, well, I have what feels like a sinus infection, and possibly an ear infection, but I don’t think it could be COVID” I replied, in what I hoped was my most reassuring tone.
It wasn’t reassuring, though. To be perfectly fair to the poor woman, I chose my words terribly. In hindsight, saying “I don’t think it could be COVID” to this nurse was like saying “I don’t think I have a gun in my pocket” to a bank teller. To put it mildly, the atmosphere in the room changed.
To her credit, she did not leap back in terror, but it was clear she wanted to. We ran through the symptoms again, and she resisted the urge to have a stroke. Interestingly, she seemed most interested in my total lack of fever. Thank goodness for my partner’s insistence on frequent checks of my temperature, or I’m pretty sure my life would have looked very much like the third act of “E.T.”
As soon as she completed her tasks, she vanished. I think I detected a sigh of relief.
Do Medical Interns Get Hazard Pay?
My doctor is the world’s most reassuring human. He is completely unflappable. The only time I ever saw him surprised or upset in any way was a couple of years ago after a trip to the ER due to what seemed at the time to be a heart attack.
He looked at my blood pressure, triglycerides and cholesterol and his eyes widened by a tiny fraction. This alone alarmed me. “Wow,” he said. “If you don’t do something about this, it will kill you.”
That put the fear of God into me far more than listening to the ER doctors debating whether or not to defibrillate me. That day I changed my diet and lifestyle radically, and have since lost seventy pounds and counting.
But I digress. The point I’m trying to make is that apart from that single incident, my doctor is always comforting, reassuring and practical.
The last couple of times I have seen my doctor, he has had med students come in first and give me a once over. These are very weird experiences, mostly because the tables are turned so dramatically. With the interns, I always feel like I need to comfort them and make them less nervous. It’s very clear to me that they are obviously qualified and competent to examine me, but they are still hesitant. I think they’re afraid they’re going to mess it up so badly that it’s even obvious to a layman that they don’t know their sacrum from their coccyx. Or, possibly they’re going to break me or offend me.
Last time, there was a guy named Doug. Doug was extremely conscientious and scribbled everything into a tiny wee notebook, whose pages were ragged on the edges with fidgety concern for patient wellbeing. He wanted to do simple neurological tests on me. You know, “I’m going to push down on your arms, try to resist” kind of thing. He seemed to think I would take it as some kind of sign that my nervous system was self destructing. “These are just routine tests, I don’t have any reason to believe you have a problem,” Doug said.
“I take a narcotic central nervous system stimulant twice a day. If you want to test my nervous system, I’m all for it,” I said. He seemed taken aback that I had even thought about such things.
This time, a young woman named Lisa looked me over. Lisa also had a notebook, but her writing was smoother and more confident. Her pages were crisp and clean on the edges even though the notebook was at least half full. Unlike Doug, she even used both sides of the paper. She was extremely professional, and took the news of my ear infection with a little more grace than the nurse. I also took the opportunity to have another run at my phrasing.
“I haven’t had a fever or anything, but I have had some sinus trouble since the weekend and now it feels like it’s going up into my ears, would you mind taking a look at it?”
Her eyes narrowed slightly above her mask, and her movements slowed a bit, but apart from that, there was no sign that her adrenal glands had just flooded her brain with fight or flight chemicals. “Sure,” she said in the same steady voice she had used when she asked me if I’d been abroad in the last nine months. By the time she reached the scope thingy they stick in your ear, her composure was rock solid again.
Bedside Manner
My doctor was not fazed by my illness. I wish there were more of a story here, but there isn’t. He just looked in my ears.
In the end, Lisa and my doctor both agreed that it wasn’t COVID. If I’m honest, I was hoping for a more substantial prescription than OTC nasal spray. I was even more disappointed at how effective it was. Nevertheless, as a person who is used to being given the side eye for my medical conditions, this was a bit harrowing.
Be safe out there, and please for everyone’s sake, take every precaution against COVID, but also, if you don’t want to be treated like a possible leper, try not to get sick with anything else either.
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