Adventures in medical care

I'm technically on vacation right now. My track was on for eight weeks, then we get eight weeks off before coming back in November, but I was offered the chance to teach for the entire vacation and make a shitpile of money, so I took it. I'd love to actually take a vacation and work on my script since I haven't really had a weekday off since February except my brief reunion trip, but when you're juggling bills the way I am you can't afford to turn down the extra dough.

My thyroid glands started swelling up on Monday. By Tuesday it was getting hard to eat solid foods, but it was the last day of the semester and I needed to clean out my room for the teacher coming in. I was being moved up to the top floor for eight weeks so I could move back in November. Don't try to figure it out; our school's a little retarded. By Wednesday it hurt to talk and I couldn't even swallow water without pain, but it was the first day of the new semester and I couldn't leave a new set of kids with a sub, so I went. At this point I'm on a liquid diet, but even that is too painful. I consumed about 800 calories total yesterday, including a bowl of soup I forced down.

What's been really annoying is how delicious my neighborhood smells. I want food but all I can do is chug down fat free chocolate milk.

Last night I finally took a flashlight and examined my tonsils. White stuff. Strep.

So today I went to the doctor. Not the urgent care center five miles away, but the fancy doctor's office by the airport forty-five minutes from my apartment, which is the only doctor in town my medical plan will allow me to go to. After waiting almost an hour, a tiny Asian man comes in, does the exact same thing with the flashlight I had done the night before and says "Oh yeah. You've got THE TONSILITIS." Then he writes a prescription for Penicillin and I'm out. Total actual time with doctor: 4 minutes. They did not validate my parking.

Then there was the nurse in the elevator who kept going on and on to the other nurse about how fabulous her lunch was. It was so much food that she had to take half of it out in this styrofoam container she kept waving under my nose. Had I not been so malnourished, I'd have punched her.

The doctor's office scale put me at 135. I've been going to the gym like gangbusters for six months, losing about a pound a week, in a valiant effort to get myself down to 135. I haven't been to the gym in a while because they fired Trainer for no good reason and he's the main reason I go to that ghetto place, so I'm trying to get out of my contract and follow Trainer to his new gym. At any rate, I'm wondering if it's even worth it. Fuck gyms. I'm going to publish a book: Emily's Involuntary Anorexia Diet. It'll sell millions. Just close off your throat and you won't be abe to eat food anymore.

I tried to drink one of those chocolate Hershey's Kisses milkshakes for lunch because I've got calories to spare today, but it turns out those things aren't actually good. At least I got some Penicillin, although why it takes five pharmacists an hour to fill one prescription is a mystery I will never unravel.

I have a feeling I'm not going to be able to go to work tomorrow either. That's one of the problems with a job that requires you to talk all day - it requires you to talk all day, whether you can or not. Screw that. I'm staying home. Expect some progress on that progress bar.