In which there’s a trip to the clinic.

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]hursday night at the gig, someone asked me if I had walking pneumonia.

Today I googled it, and yeah, I have all the symptoms — but it was already Friday afternoon and I didn’t get the impression I was going to drop dead from it and sure, I should probably see a doctor but it’s not like I’ve been so sick I couldn’t work, I mean, I worked over 40 hours this week and did a gig and even went out a couple of times —

— but after spending a couple more hours coughing constantly, I called the Family Medical Center to see if there was an appointment I could have. I explained I was on Day 7 of a cold that wasn’t getting any better, that I was waking myself up at night coughing, and that my cold symptoms weren’t going away.

She scheduled me at 7 o’clock. I got off work at six after a long, busy afternoon full of weird support problems I couldn’t solve and rode my bike down Rose street to the clinic.

My nose ran and I coughed like I was dying during check-in, while sitting in the lobby, and while being led to the exam room. My nose ran and I coughed like I was dying while I sat there waiting for the nurse.

My vitals were all fine but my blood oxygen level was a little low and I was running a low fever. The doctor couldn’t hear breath moving through my lungs so she gave me a breathing treatment, which is the coolest thing in the world, sorta like an asthma hooka. Some kind of crazy machine* with a tube you inhale from, slowly and deeply, and from which there are lazy tendrils of mist that look like smoke. It’s like partying, only in a doctor’s office, and the device looks more like an old-school portable hair dryer than a hookah, but still.

I think she said it was Albuterol. Whatever it was, it was hella fun. And after five minutes on the machine, I was no longer coughing my balls off and my chest felt much more normal. I don’t even know if I’d realized how tight it was until it eased. The breathing treatment made me feel wonderful. Comfortable, warm, kinda jacked, without desire. I felt transcendent on my ride home. The drug gives you high blood pressure and rapid heart beat, but who cares. (The deep well-being might have been placebo; I don’t see anything online about such side effects. Maybe I just hadn’t been able to breathe for so long that I was just reacting to air.)

The doc thinks I have influenza, not pneumonia or atypical pneumonia, but I have to check in Monday morning if I’m not better. She prescribed me dextromethorphan and Albuterol to manage my symptoms.

There was only one pharmacy open, the one at Shopko, so I left the clinic and rode to the mall. There was a half-hour wait because the pharmacy was a little behind. I texted the band to tell them I was waiting for meds and then I waited. The pharmacist gave me a giant bottle of cough syrup and an Albuterol inhaler and I gave them $75 and rode off on my bicycle.

It all took so long that I missed my 7 – 9 gig at Walla Faces altogether, making this the third gig I’ve missed in eight days due to this stupid illness.

The doctor told me to rest as much as possible, so I’m going to take some cough syrup and put my slightly-feverish, very tired self to bed.

—
* it’s called a nebulizer, according to teh google