Give me a cup of Chunky Ebola Flakes served in a mildly tepid bowl of cholerafied milk and call it a breakfast to die for!!! I’ve just spent ten days on my back with some monsterous unearthly plague of a virus that has left me more frail than an 89 year old hip replacement part and more frustrated than pre-pubescent male caught on the same beach as a Victoria’s Secret Summer catalogue shoot.
Yes… ten days in bed… literally dying… and it doesn’t matter what anybody else says – I know I was literally dying…
…Until I got better of course.
Day One: a normal day really – nothing overly special. Most of my days are like that; I get up, trip over the cat; fall into the shower; eat some breakfast (a healthy, heart approved serving of Eggs Benedict with Bacon – who is not a Jewish Rabbi by the way) washed down with a large Soya Flat White, catch the bus to town, talked sports with Larry in Accounts – well, you don’t need to hear all the detail - Except that later that evening when I got home I noticed that I had a bit of a sore throat coming on and I thought; “great, a Summer Cold”.
Day Two: Who fed me broken glass and razor blades with my chicken soup? This isn’t Halloween!!! Yep, woke up with a whole batch of Iraqi WMDs going off in my throat causing my head to pound and my neck to ache. So I go to Doctor number one – Think his name was Mengles. He sticks a monitor in my ear to take my temperature, looks down my throat – well more like mines down there with a great big spade, full sized Tonka truck and a helmet light – and declares that I have Strep Throat. He then decides to take a swab. The next thing I know he’s got me pinned down with his knee on my chest, left hand firm on my forehead, and he’s thrusting a giant cotton bud so far down my throat that I can feel it rubbing my Spleen. With that, he prescribes some Penicillin and some mild pain killers and sends me on my way – best part $60 for his services.
Day Three: Broken glass and razor blades still there – great! Fortunately they’re occasionally relieved when I throw up some alien acid that burns the crap out of everything between my stomach and the porcelain (which shows vague signs of a melt). And now there’s the fever too – from cold to boiling quicker than a Katie Perry chorus lyric. But the best part is the hallucinations throughout the night – not nice things like flowers or paisley colours or rising stock prices – but horrible things like Zombies with razor blades, kids in Halloween costumes, a meeting with the National Party Caucus to discuss whether New Zealand's low income families should retain their basic human rights…
So Day Four begins with a trip to a second Doctor. Her name was Livingstone I presume. She begins by also sticking the monitor thing in my ear before going for a coal mine down my throat. Fortunately she doesn’t need to take another swab so the bruising on my Spleen will have a chance to clear. She prescribes a different antibiotic and a variation on the same mild pain killers. I mean – razor blades and glass, acid producing vomit and a volcanic-level fever – give me the real stuff for God’s sake!!! But I figure she must know what she’s doing because she has given me a different antibiotic – and she charged $85 for her services – indicating a higher expertise than Mengles. So I’m quietly confident.
Day Five: It’s Christmas Day!!! Yay!!! More broken glass and razor blades. More Alien acid puke. More brimstone exploding out of my forehead. The only good thing is that I’m now so exhausted that after every three breathes I have to go and have a lie down. I haven’t eaten in four days, hardly drunk anything, and at last puke everything was like acidic soap bubbles in the absence of any other substantive fodder to be excommunicated.
So after I collapse at lunchtime – my darling (who I have to concede here with utmost sincerity, was there for me every step of the way – even when through my own frustrations I sometimes failed to demonstrate my appreciation of her) dragged me to our local Hospital A&E department for some answers. Here we get an American sounding Doctor (Elementary Watson I think) who announces that it isn’t an infection like Strep Throat and that’s why the Penicillin and Antibiotics haven’t helped. Instead, he decides it’s viral and calls the nurse to take a bucket load of blood for tests. But I like this guy – he prescribes some major heavy duty painkillers (like these will knock you out and send you to the Moon). Better still, he doesn’t cost anything because he’s part of the public health system – so even if he’s wrong – who cares; it’s very dark up here and planet earth is blue.
Day Six, Seven and Eight are pretty much the same. Broken Glass and Razor Blades, Alien Acid Puke and “Fire in the hole” fevers quelled by Elementary Watson’s super juice and vague trips to the Moon. But I realize this can’t go on. I’m still not eating, still hardly drinking – and my poor darling is at her wit’s end looking after me.
Day Nine: less glass and razor blades – no Alien Acid left to hurl. Can’t sit up in bed without having to take a lie down. But I decide to stop taking Elementary Watson’s super juice. I need to be able to focus enough to get to Doctor number four tomorrow and demand resolution.
Day Ten: Throat feels vaguely human – getting my strength back. I head out to see Doctor number four: Spock. Now she looks at all the tests done by the others and concludes that it’s not an infection – no evidence of that. It’s none of the viruses tested for either – bloods were clean. It’s Influenza – a nasty case. And the best thing you can do is stay at home, take over-the-counter paracetamol, keep your fluids up and ride it out. Oh, and that’ll be $35.
Great! $60 for an initial wrong diagnosis and ineffective pain killers. $85 for a concurrence with that initial wrong diagnosis and equally ineffective painkillers. A gallon of blood for a ‘kind of in the ball park’ diagnosis and some super effective, let's-go-to-the-moon-type painkillers. $35 to be told that I didn’t need to spend any of that money because none of the doctors could really do anything more to help than what my darling could have done at home – PRICELESS
Can I get a refund on a poor diagnosis?
That’s what I think… and usually I’m right.
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