I'm sitting in the waiting area...I was told it would be about a 20 minute wait to be seen. I was given a pager, so I walked the aisles for a short bit. Nothing but a pumpkin spice latte jumped out at me, so I returned to the waiting area with my drink in hand. As others come in to be seen, it grew to an hour and twenty minute wait!
As the photo shows, each corner table had a kleenex box and antigerm hand sanitizer.
People didn't seem to want to hang around there. Rather, they took their pager and multi-tasked as this generation seems to be edept at doing and hit the aisles. Even if they returned with nothing, it was a nice way to kill time and keep on spreading the germs.
I've been assessing each person coming in and wondering what they are afflicted with. I wonder how many have any type of flu including H1N1 or if they were in for different reasons. I feel somewhat guilty being there because I don't exhibit obvious symptoms other than my drip-drip-dripping nose, but with this crap hanging out for more than a week, I needed to get in so that I didn't wish I could stick a pin in my head to pop the pressure like a balloon.
So my name gets called and I'm seen by the Medical Assistant. I take the route of making small talk with her as she checks my vitals. I learn that this is the new normal at the clinic where there is an endless trail of people streaming in to be seen for this ailment or that ailment. She said she much prefers this type of day compared to when they had the flu vaccine and they were seeing 180 patients. Holy cow! She feels badly that the shortfall to going to this sort of clinic is that they can only see one person at a time, whic attributes to the long wait. I commented that the people I've noticed today seem to take it in stride. She agreed, but also followed up that it truly depends on the day whether people deal well or not with the waiting situation.
I was seen by a nurse who was very pleasant. She asked a lot of questions regarding the onset of my symptoms, the duration of symptoms and if there are certain activities or motions that set off particular symptoms. She then proceeded with the typical examination: lungs, ears, nose, throat, eyes. Sure enough, based on the symptoms and some internal indications, I was pegged for a sinus infection. Yippee! After ten or so minutes, I walked out toward the pharmacy to wait yet another twenty minutes to get my little piece of heaven in the shape of a huge horse pill of amoxicillan. Taken 3x daily for 10 days.
Isn't is sad to be happy to be sick?
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