Doctor Update

I started my day at 6:00 calling to get appointments. I finally got through at 6:20, and the man told me he couldn't give me 5 appointments just to get throat cultures, so he would give my information to the nurses' station, and they would somehow book us all together for a shorter amount of time. Sounds good, right? So I dutifully hung up to wait for the nurse to call back, since they don't open until 7:00. Fortunately, Bob was much more aware and cognizant at this early hour, so he suggested that I call again and at least get me an appointment, since I am really the one that has all the symptons and am very uncomfortable. I did that, getting an 11:00 appointment. At 7:45 the nurse calls me and tells me that there are no appointments left, so there is no way to get any throat cultures for us. She brightens up when I say that I have an appointment. "Well, let's just see if YOU have strep! It's probably jsut a virus anyways." Then she asks the ages of the boys and says they don't do throat cultures on kids under 5. Hmm.

We troop off at 10:15, and I saw a really nice doctor who took 2 cultures, one for the long test, and one for the 10 minutes one. Surprise, surprise, the 10 minute one was positive, so I'm back on antibiotics. I can't believe this--I have been sick more in the past month than in the past year! I guess I really am just sort of rundown from nursing, and therefore more susceptible.

So now I am trying to decide if I will try again with the boys tomorrow. Nathan and Luke are not exhibiting any symptoms at all, and I can't decide about Caleb and Jonathan. They don't seem 100%, but they are not complaining about sore throats, running a fever, or anything, and with the clinic's bizarre no-culture policy, it doesn't sound like they would even culture them if they weren't showing definite strep symptoms, which they really aren't. Grrr.

I don't know if I'm up to another trip out to the clinic tomorrow! We had quite a time getting home today. The Beltway was slow because of looky-loos rubbernecking an accident on the shoulder, and then Rt. 7 was COMPLETELY closed because of some huge crash involving an overturned semi trailer and some cars, from what I could see before we had to turn off onto some little side road with a million other cars to wind and wend our way back to recognizable roads. It took over an hour to get home. Whew! Good thing I wasn't sick or anything.