For the seventh morning in a row I woke up wishing for a cough-free day and to be miraculously cured of this throat plague. Alas.
Hacking miserably all the way to the office, as soon as I reached my desk I called the medical clinic to see a doctor and got an appointment for 11:15. I was hoping — as bizarre as it sounds — for a diagnosis of a bacterial infection because then I could take antibiotics and hopefully be done with it. But the doctor said it was definitely not a bacterial infection, it was viral. So, no antibiotics, she says, I just have to let this virus run its course.
It’s been a week but it feels like forever, like this virus has had ample time to play a course of 18 holes all around my throat and lungs and is now looking for teammates to play another round.
Probably the other part of this that riles me up is the memory of David’s PCP (Primary Care Physician) in Pennsylvania — an FAA doctor — who prescribed antibiotics over the telephone. David had been coughing for a whole month because this same doctor kept postponing his appointments by a week at a time, and he never looked at David’s throat. If he had, he wouldn’t have prescribed antibiotics because IT WASN’T BACTERIAL. In fact, if David had a viral infection, those antibiotics could’ve made things worse. As it stood, David’s condition was neither viral nor bacterial, it was because a tumour was growing in his lung and irritating his air passage — a discovery only made by the ER doctor after discussing all the symptoms with David in person.
And those are the operative words: in person.
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