Well the good news is that I feel somewhat better today.

I am not out of the woods by any stretch of the imagination, but I can at least see the light from the clearing in the distant trees. Some of the life-crushing energy drain has lifted adn so I am not nearly as depressed as I was yesterday.

Dunno why. Maybe my immune system is finally starting to beat this goddamned bug. I sincerely hope that is the case. I really want to be rid of this meddlesome virus, and for reasons carved entirely out of male insanity, I would rather I did it on my own.

Because then I didn’t have to show vulnerability to an authority figure (Doctor Chao) and let him put his drugs inside me.

I told you it was crazy.

Speaking of Doc Chao, I still don’t have an appointment with that motherfucker. I called five times today – no answer. The voice mail that starts “This service does not take messages..” didn’t even kick in. Just ring ring ring ring ring….

Exactly. Thanks. Pedo McBeardface!

So now I have to start thinking about alternatives to Doc Chao because while my mood is better, I think my lungs are slowly getting worse. It seems like I am short of breath all the time now, even when I am just sitting here typing, and I have to breathe slowly and deliberately in order to keep up with minimum oxygen demand.

So I don’t think this is something I can afford to leave till Monday.

Why do these medical things always happen to me right before the weekend? FML.

So that leaves two main options : a walk in clinic, and the emergency room.

I am quite leery of walk in clinics. Every one of them that I have been to is understaffed by extremely bored people who clearly hate being there and give your case the absolute minimum of thought it takes to make you go away.

Why do they suck so bad? Because you have high status people (doctors, nurses) seeing to the needs of very low status people, like the homeless and drug addicts.

And to someone who went to medical school,, having to see to the medical needs of people who don’t matter and don’t count and are often ugly on multiple levels and possibly not all that bright is absolute torture.

They didn’t go to medical school/ nursing school in order to spend all day around poor people! That can’t possibly be right. That’s not how the universe is supposed to work!

So like everyone else who hates their job, they are only going to put in the absolutely minimum amount of effort they think they can get away with, and that minimum does not include the effort it takes to mask their contempt for their clients.

And the clients don’t complain because in their world, doctors are highly intimidating authority figures from another dimension and they are just glad that one of these galactic superbeings paid attention to one as lowly as them.

That’s why it takes a middle class guy with middle class expectations like myself to see how badly the whole thing is run.

I swear, in another lifetime, I was a medical administrator, and I fixed that shit.

With extreme prejudice.

Whatever that means.

So to sum up, I really don’t want to go to a walk-in clinic. I do not like them.

But the alternative isn’t any more attractive. Taking something like this to the emergency room would activate another powerful symptom of a middle class upbringing : guilt. I would find myself wondering if it was really an emergency, per se, and if it wasn’t why should I be here taking up valuable resourcees that could be going to someone far sicker than I am.

So, guilt. And neurosis.

So I dunno. As insane as it sounds to me, I think I am going to have to just play it by ear, or rather, by lung. If I get worse, which is a real possibility, then it will be time for a trip to the OR. If not, I might limp my way to the walk in clinic a block away.

This thing has gotten as far as it has becauise it has snuck up on me slowly. I don’t have the kind of symptoms that I associate with a chest infection. Like everyone else, I have had chest colds. and they usually give me a heavy feeling on my chest, hacking up a lot of gross stuff, and a deep soreness in my lung tissue.

None of those are present right now. At least, not in forms I can recognize. What has been happening instead is that the goo in my lungs has been very slowly building up and displacing my lung capacity, which due to sleep apnea ain’t great oto start with.

What I need is an expectorant. This lung goo has got to go and I don’t think my body’s natural reflexes are up to the job. Most of my coughing is not productive, dammit, and so clearly I need something that will loosen things up in there

And maybe that is all I need. I hope that’s all I need. But it occurred to me just now that “lungs slowly filling up goo” is pretty much the definition of pneumonia, and that possibly I should be putting this whole thing on an even faster timetable.

So how’s this : not better by morning, it’s ER time.

And if it gets worse, ER time, no matter how inconvenient the timing or how I would rather keep hanging out with my friends at Denny’s.

You know. To take a random example.

So that’s my life right now. The serious contemplation of whether I should go to the ER now or later.

Life is such a basket of kittens, isn’t it?

Oh well. This is what life’s like when you are old and fat and so out of shape that you basically no longer have one.

I should probably do something about that at some point.

You know. When I have the energy.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.