Big Surprise...I'm Sick

One of the consequences of teaching 6 and 7-year-olds is that I truly work in a germ factory and spend quite a bit of time sick in bed. Normally, it's just colds that run their course in a day or two. On Thursday, I woke up with an incredibly painful sore throat and earache. I thought it was just congestion that had settled in my throat overnight. That happens to me all the time when I have a cold, and it goes away pretty quickly. All I usually need is to be standing upright and blow my nose a bit and I feel fine. However, this didn't go away, and by the time I got home, I was running a low-grade fever and had body aches.

Last year, when I had the same symptoms, I had a VERY nasty flu. And after school on Thursday, we had a meeting where our principal said that if we had any probably cases of swine flu, they would shut down the school for a week, which pushes the school year into June. This is a huge problem for me because I have to move out by June 1st. I would have to put the dog in a kennel (expensive) and move in with a family member. Plus, I have to go to school an extra week, which is something I just don't want. So, I was very afraid to go to a doctor. I didn't really think I had swine flu, but on the .01% chance I did, I didn't want to be officially diagnosed with it.

However, after spending 4 days of Spring Break sick on the couch, I decided to see a doctor at a clinic anyway. When I went in, they asked me what was wrong. I told them I could have strep, the flue, or nothing at all. Since I had flu-like symptoms, I had to wear one those masks that everyone has in Mexico. I was the only one in the waiting room with one, and I felt ridiculous. I also realized once I took it off that I had put in on upside-down. Ooops!

I didn't have to wait very long, which was a pleasant surprise. The nurse was kinda mean to me when she took a throat swab, which wasn't fun. Then the doctor came in and told me I had...drumroll please...strep throat! Surprise! I had strep 4 times my first year teaching, and I finally thought after not having it last year I had built up immunity to it. After teaching for a while, you are supposed to. And I guess overall I did, since it was April before I got it. I am convinced that's what I had during Spring Break as well, but I was too stubborn to go to a doctor. I thought at the time I'd be paying them to tell me nothing was wrong. Guess I was wrong! So I had some shot in my hip that's supposed to be painful (it was and still is very sore) but better than amoxocillin since you only have to have it once rather than twice a day for 10 days. Which suits me fine since I always forget to take my pills by the end. It's hard to remember to take medicine when you feel well!

One last funny note about the whole thing. On Fridays, we get out of school at 12:30. We are able to schedule doctor's appointments and whatnot as long as we don't have a meeting. However, we seem to be a school full of meetings (kinda like church!), and surprise, surprise, we had one yesterday. So I went to my principal and told him I would like to go to a clinic after school since I was showing flu-like symptoms and shouldn't really even be at school. He asked me if I could go from 1:00-2:00, and be back in time for the start of the meeting! I was kinda shocked. Everyone is so overly-alarmed about this swine flu junk, and he wants me and my flu symptoms back in school?! I told him it was a clinic, which are probably very busy right now, and I would come back if I could. I actually was done by about 2:00--there was no wait at all. And when they diagnosed me with strep and not flu, I thought about going back for about 5 minutes. Then I realized I had been diagnosed with a highly contagious disease, and I was in pain since my pills had worn off. I went home. (And then I went back out in public to see Wolverine, but we're going to pretend I went home to sleep off my illness. The movie was a lot of fun, by the way!)