Friday, December 31, 2010

Visit(s) to the doctor...


I love being diagnosed with strep throat. That isn’t to say that it’s my most favorite thing in the world. But when you’re plagued with an aching sore throat with no remedy, a verdict of Streptococcus seems like the only light at the end of the tunnel.

My husband was ‘sick’ with a scratchy throat over the weekend. When my throat started bothering me the following Sunday night, I thought I’d caught whatever he had. As he left Monday morning, he called out to me “just rest, don’t do any work around the house while you’re sick”, a way to get himself off the hook for not folding any laundry while he was home sick, the day before.

I made a doctor’s appointment later that day, for the required ‘sick note’, and just a check up. I didn’t think that the sore throat would turn into anything more than a bad cold. While driving there, I received a call from an unknown number, and didn’t check the message until I was parking in the underground parking lot. “Hello, this is the Dr’s office. She won’t be able to make your appointment in 15 minutes.” To say I was extremely disappointed in the inept medical system, falls short of the reaction I had. I begrudgingly returned home, assuming that, in any case, I would feel better the next day.

I woke up that night with an excruciating lump in my throat, and I knew that this was far from over. My throat hurt so much, reminding me of my brief bout with mono two years ago. The next day, I tried everything, and I mean everything: hot water with lemon and honey, whiskey, ginger, sprays, pills -- the whole works. I went back to the doctor, who took a quick look and said “it looks like some sort of virus -- how many sick days from work do you need?”

Over the next two days, I drank more hot water with things floating in it than I ever have before. I polled people for any home remedies they knew, and tried some pretty crazy ones.

I finally decided that enough was enough, and I went back to the doctor yet again. I dragged my husband with me this time, for moral support. We came without an appointment, and I felt fine with that, seeing as she had stood me up once, and completely misdiagnosed me the second time, all in one week.

My husband teased me that it was people like me that held up upstanding people who come in waiting for real appointments. I said that we would be quick, in and out, and that we would hardly waste people’s time. Which is why I was so surprised when we finally went into the doctor’s office, and it was my husband who was chit-chatting with the doctor. It started about how his immune system is so much stronger than mine, because he exposes it to everything. This got the doctor rolling -- she really loves to chit-chat with other English speakers -- and the discussion evolved to lactose intolerance and a conference that she’d been at, the day before. This of course evoked my husband’s pride at his claim of being able to ‘overcome’ his lactose intolerance when he first came to Israel, some 9 years ago. Let’s just say, it was not I who held up the other patients.

When she came around to checking my throat, she said “oh, yeah -- it may be strep throat! Sometimes strep throat can be detected by little white dots in your throat, and other times, your throat looks normal”. She diagnosed me with strep, wrote me a referral to the lab for a throat swab, and a prescription for much-needed antibiotics.

She joked with my husband about my being overly-conscientious with regard to feeling bad about missing so much work. And as she wrote out a new doctor’s note, she said -- “you know, I always wonder why there’s no word for conscientious in Hebrew” -- and I thought to myself -- looking back over the events of the past few days -- that it’s really no wonder at all.




Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Change -- and Pink Hand Soap


I think that we, as human beings, can really get used to almost anything. It is true that when faced with changes and obstacles, we get frightened and nervous about how to proceed into uncharted territory.

There are a few schools of thought, when facing such obstacles: one is to convince yourself of your future successes, and thus become so positively directed that you can’t imagine failure. The other is quite the opposite: to prepare yourself for the absolute worst; to become aware of any and all ramifications of the worst outcome, and to accept it as a possible -- and probable outcome.

I don’t accept change easily. I do not enjoy the challenge of something new; I prefer the known and the comfortable. This is why I become anxious and apprehensive when faced with new things. Actually, anxious is a bit of an understatement. When I recently booked my driver’s license road test for two weeks later, I couldn’t think of anything else. I stayed up at night, worrying about what would happen. I felt sick to my stomach, with pains that wouldn’t go away.

People tend to think that they are helping when they say “its all in your head” or “just think positively” -- but they just don’t understand. You see, if it was that easy, if all that it takes is just to tell myself that it will be okay, then wouldn’t I have tried such a tactic? Those people personify the first school of thought (above) that can convince themselves that they can succeed in any situation. The kind of person that I would like to be (and hate at the same time).

Lately, I am coming to the realization that some people had in their teenage years: that things aren’t as scary as they seem once you get used to them. Gaining experience and seeing what’s out there really helps one to succeed. Maybe, even planning to fall and pick yourself up once or twice is not the worst method.

So, although I failed the first driving test that I took, when I came back and tried again, I felt much more prepared and calm, knowing what lay ahead. I passed with flying colours the second time around.

But here’s another example of change: my fluorescent hand soap phobia. Israelis, for all their progress in technology, have not yet mastered the hand soap industry. The most common brands produce bright pink, blue or green goop, that have pungent, and interestingly unnatural smells. For a long time, my office had the orange flavour in stock. I was able to stand the orange flavour, as it slightly resembled a normal-smelling soap. But recently, the office manager changed, and with her, so did the soap flavour -- to pink.

At the beginning, I found myself close to throwing up every time I washed my hands. I almost resorted to bringing in my own hand soap, and hiding it somewhere, so that I wouldn’t be that weird person in the office bringing in their own soap. Then I told myself (and granted, this was a very quick decision, seeing as this was a sudden change) that I have to just take the plunge, and get used to it. I knew that it would be awful. I knew that I would find myself sitting at my desk sniffing and wondering who had mixed dishwashing liquid with ketchup -- and then realize that the smell was coming from me. And it was pretty bad at first, there were some hard times, I’m not going to lie. But slowly, I have gotten used to the smell. It has become less terrible, and more familiar. Once I got used to it, I realized that life with pink hand soap is better than life without any hand soap. And that maybe I can, one day, reach the point where I can embrace change as it hits me in the face.