August 29, 2005

• The Sound of Silence

  So... I've been quiet. Quiet on the blog-front, but also quiet on the
  calling-people-emailing-people front, too and I am afraid said people
  (and by this I mean close friends and family)
  may be taking my quietness personally, which is understandable. And
  then, I feel bad for not calling/emailing and feel afraid that they
  might be mad at me and that just causes me to want to avoid the whole
  situation by not calling/emailing. The truth is, I just don't feel
  like I have that much to say. Probably because, except for work, I
  really don't leave my house much. Which, I am actually emotionally okay
  with (as in, I don't feel depressed), but intellectually I feel like I
  should be doing more with my time-- like taking yoga or going to the
  gym or doing something besides reading, surfing the web and watching TV.

  So... what has been going on with me? Well, I was sick for two weeks--
  but it was kind of random sypmtoms here and there (sore throat,
  low-grade fever, body aches) and I have gone over my sick time twice
  already since starting my current job last fall, so I was afraid to
  call in sick and just worked through it-- which culminated in my left
  maxillary lymph node (the one right below your jaw) slowly swelling the
  the size of a tennis ball (okay, so it was more golf ball size, but
  when it's in your neck and you can't sleep on it, it feels bigger).
  When I called to make an appointment with my PCP (if you don't know
  what a PCP is, then you have better health insurance than I do) I found
  out that she hasn't been personally seeing patients for about 6 years
  now. Bravo, Blue Cross! See, when I started my job and picked which
  health plan I wanted to go with, I had to just randomly pick a PCP out
  of their database. So, I picked the only one who was "accepting new
  patients" who had an office up on the campus where I work. Well, turns
  out that she oversees medical students who bill in her name, you don't
  ever actually see her. Okay, so I'm all for med students learning how
  to be doctors, but your (and I'll spell it out for dramatic effect)
  PRIMARY CARE PROVIDER should not be an ever-changing string of med
  students. Anyway, I chatted with some people at work and got a
  recommendation for another doctor and then had to call Blue Cross the
  next morning to have them change my PCP-- which was not as hard or
  painful as I though it would be. I was able to get in to see that
  doctor the same day (she and her staff were very nice, yay!) and she
  put me on penicillin and referred me to an ENT (an ear, nose, and
  throat doctor, not one of those talking-tree things from Lord of the
  Rings-- but that would have been cool, no?)  who took a look at me
  and prescribed me a stonger antibiotic (since I work in a hospital
  where all the antibiotic resistant stuff grows). One yeast infection
  later and I am all better now.

  • 8:58 pm
  • 1 Comment