The Doctor Visit

I made it home and I made it to the doctor. By the time I was put in a room, I was running a 102.2 fever and I had serious thoughts about just staying in that little room for the rest of the day and night.

The thought of leaving was exhausting and I was extremely tired and worn out. It happens that the nurse of our doctor is a friend. She immediately said, "Hmmm, I bet you have the flu." She smiled at me for a moment and then told me to go down the hall to get a "flu swab."

I thought I'd had them before and I KNEW they were uncomfortable. Evidently, all the other flu swabs I'd had before were incorrectly and inefficiently done. This lab tech person, now after referred to as Satan's Mistress, took that fourteen foot long Q-tip from its sterile package. She told me to "have a seat" in one of the bench seats with the seatbelts and the arms that come down around you. I complied and even said, "I hope I don't infect you." She smiled and said, "I don't think you will. Now, hold real still." I swear I saw a bit of red flame behind her eyes as she said that and I KNOW I smelled sulfur.

She grabbed that Q-tip and began the ascent up my nasal cavity. The first half of a second was "uncomfortable," the next few howeverlongitwas was one of the most painful things I've ever had happen to me.

God as my witness, that Q-tip poked the back side of my left eyeball! I watched, cross-eyed, as she kept shoving that thing up further and further into my brain. Right at the point I thought I would pass out, she slowly withdrew her arm from inside my left nostril and removed the rest of that fourteen foot long Q-tip. "All done," she quipped, handing me a single-ply tissue from the standard sandpaper tissue box that sits in every doctor's office.

I looked at her, then down at the tissue. I wanted to cuss her out, but I decided instead to take my single-ply tissue and dab at my nose with it. I couldn't have punched her because she'd temporarily blinded me by applying pressure on the optic nerve with that damn Q-tip!

There's a time and a place for revenge. When you have a 102.2 fever, are blinded in one eye, and left holding a single-ply tissue while the person across from you has red flames licking up behind her eyes and has a fourteen foot long Q-tip with your mucus on it, that is not the right place or time!

I remember giving her "the look" that The Spouse gives me when she's not happy and wants me to know it without saying anything. Then I walked back to my room with my tissue in hand. It was me and that tissue against the world at that moment. I was squinting my left eye, praying to God that my vision would return, squeezing that tissue like it was the neck of the lab tech and I was muttering curses on her and her whole family all the way back to my room.

I sat in that little room waiting for the doctor to return. Slowly, my vision came back. By the time he came in the room, I'd texted no less than 85 people telling them that I'd been blinded by a maniac wielding a fourteen foot long Q-tip in the lab at my doctor's office. I was amassing my army in case I had to go back in there.

The doctor came in and said, "Well, the good news is you tested negative for the flu! I could have sworn you would be positive but you aren't."

I looked at him and I was P-I-S-S-E-D O-F-F! I had just been attacked and blinded by Satan's Mistress in the lab and BY GOD I DESERVED TO HAVE THE FLU!!!

He must have thought the fever was having an effect on me because he just ignored the look I gave him and began telling me that I had "the crud." That's my official diagnosis. I have "the crud." I sat there, not saying a thing. I had my tissue clutched in my hand and I just sat there looking at him. He looked at me a bit longer and then said, "Here are some prescriptions for you to help you get over this. That cough medicine is new and it may make you groggy. Call me if you aren't better in a few days." I gathered up my iPad, iPhone, my keys, my prescriptions and my tissue and I shuffled out the door and down the hallway.

One day, one day very soon, I will return to that place and I will have my revenge on that lab tech. Until then, I'll clutch that tissue and remember!