The Clinic.

I spent a good 3.5 hours of my time today at The Clinic. I got there at 7:25am to be greeted with a line up just to get into The Clinc. You'd think this was the only clinic in town! So after 10 minutes of fidgeting in line, the doors were opened and like lemmings, we all piled in. Now I'm there for a suspected strep throat, which is highly contagious and you'd think that once I tell the triage nurse that, they'd put me off somewhere else. No, no. I still got sat down with the horkers, the sneezers, the pukers and the one lady who looked like she had a bladder infection (since she kept fidgeting in her chair, crossing and uncrossing her legs and running to the bathroom every 10 minutes (later confirmed when she ran off to the bathroom with a sample cup)).

I got to see the doctor after a 2 hour wait, and he says the same thing I thought. "I suspect it's strep" and he orders up a lab culture and then tells me "if it's strep I can't let you go to work until Monday.." however he sends me back out to the full to capacity waiting room where I managed to squeeze in a seat again better the half asleep teenager and the coughing old man. Half an hour later I get called to the lab to get my throat swabbed with the warning "please don't puke or cough on me when I do this.." Ok I'll try. 15 minutes later I was handed a prescription for penicillin and a note saying I can't return to work until March 23rd, which btw, cost $20. Yep, $20 for a piece of paper that has 2 check boxes a line to fill in the date and a line for the signature. I'm in the wrong business.

I imagine now that half the people I was sitting near will be back at that clinic in 3-5 days time with strep, and I will be horking/sneezing/puking but hopefully avoiding the bladder infection.

It's a wonderful life. Really!