I am recovering from Justacold. Or maybe it is just January, I don’t know. 

Covid Exhaustion

I woke up last Wednesday with a sore throat and sniffles, and immediately assumed it was Covid. Especially when I learned that Carla and I had been in a group setting with a person who had since been diagnosed with Covid. I was sure of it. And yet, two rapid tests said no, not Covid. My husband and I looked at each other. Do we TRUST the rapid tests? What if they were wrong and I DID have Covid, and I was now unnecessarily exposing my husband and kid to Covid? Ugh.

The thing is, there seems (STILL) to be no reliable consensus on anything. Do I need to isolate or quarantine? What, pray tell, is the ever-loving difference between isolation and quarantine? Is it okay if I drive my kid to school, while masked? Does being in a room with someone who later tested positive for Covid an “exposure” if we are all vaccinated and masked? Is being masked in my house enough to protect my family, or do I need to hole up in the guest room? I read various articles to try to address these questions. I consulted the CDC website. I still cannot tell you what the right thing to do is.

Fortunately! We have a small supply of rapid tests! I will just take a rapid test and then I will know and can move on with my life! 

Oh wait. There’s no consensus there, either.

I read articles that said Covid rapid tests are very sensitive and great in terms of giving you peace of mind. I read articles that said rapid tests aren’t as good at detecting the omicron variant. I read articles saying that rapid tests aren’t great at detecting the virus early on. I read articles that said you can trust a positive result but you need to confirm a negative rapid test with a PCR. I read articles that said if you get a negative while you have symptoms, you’re probably negative. I read articles that said the more rapid-test negatives you get, the less likely it is you have Covid. This all mainly pointed to me not having Covid… But none of it was DEFINITIVE enough for me. 

So I scheduled a PCR test (I was very lucky to find one at a nearby CVS the next day) and stopped wasting our small supply of rapid tests. 

To make a very long and boring story shorter but still boring: my Covid test came back negative two days later. Even though I felt, the whole time, fairly certain I did not have Covid, I wore a mask at home and isolated for the four days between when I first experienced symptoms and when I got the results. Here is how I defined isolating: I stayed in my office or the guest room, with the doors closed, as often as possible. (It was surprisingly difficult to remember to CLOSE THE DOORS when I left one of those spaces, which seems like kind of a critical step in keeping the germs where they needed to be. I got better at it, though.) I ate meals in my office, I slept in the guest room. When I was walking to and from the bathroom/kitchen, I wore a mask. (I did drive my kid to and from school, and we both wore a mask in the car.) It was lonely but I got a lot of reading and writing done. 

Obviously, I am very glad I don’t have Covid. But I also feel really stupid. That’s the rub, right? You do the prudent, cautious thing justincase and then you feel silly when it turns out you didn’t have be prudent or cautious. I wasted an entire box of rapid tests! I missed two nights of putting my kid to sleep for no reason! I mussed up the guest room sheets for no reason! Of course, if my result had been positive, I would be feeling entirely differently. I would be feeling wise and prescient. My husband would be congratulating me on my carefulness and foresight. It’s a lose lose situation. You either feel stupid or you have Covid. 

Justacold

Also, I still feel very yucky. My throat is still scratchy. My head aches. I am not super hungry (MAJOR RED FLAG FOR ME). Maybe I should have gotten the flu test add-on CVS asked if I wanted when I got my PCR. (It’s not flu either, hypochondriac.)

Office Mishaps

Prior to getting justacold, I went for my annual gynecological exam. This year, I saw a new doctor. The office was certainly nicer than the previous office, and the staff was MUCH friendlier. Plus, the waiting room was very roomy and the seats were set well apart from one another.

(The main reason I sought out a new doctor was that last year, I waited for an hour in my gynecologist’s waiting room, during which time NO staff member updated us with the doctor’s status, and the waiting room filled up with people, many of whom were coughing. I think you will understand that my blood pressure shot up over the course of my wait – indeed, it was higher than normal when the nurse measured it – but she gave me a LECTURE about my blood pressure rather than listening to my explanation that I was stressed about being crammed into a tiny space with a dozen strangers during a pandemic. At every appointment since, my blood pressure has been JUST FINE thank you very much. I am not over it, it seems.) 

The nurse called my name and led me over to the scale (UGH) and I mentioned to her that I’d never met the doctor before. And she said, “Uh oh, I don’t have you on my schedule as a new patient.” Right away, that made me nervous. Do you know this? Doctors allot different amounts of time based on the patient’s needs, and one of the scheduling considerations is new patient vs. established patient. Just like a hairdresser needs more time if they are going to color your hair rather than give you a trim, a doctor needs more time with a new patient than with someone they know. So now I was meeting a new doctor, but already putting her behind schedule because my appointment had been mis-scheduled for X minutes instead of Xx2 minutes.

Then we went into the exam room and the nurse took my blood pressure (it was PERFECT) and asked me a few questions, and then gave me instructions about changing into the gown. (Instructions which I always, always forget. Is it supposed to be open in the front, or the back???) But then she said, “Wait, it’s so cold in here… and the doctor is in with another patient… don’t change yet. I’ll poke my head in and let you know when to change.” 

I then sat in the exam room for thirty minutes, and with every minute that ticked by, I thought, “Oh no, the nurse has forgotten about me. And the doctor is going to come in, and I will be in my street clothes, and she will be frustrated because she will have to leave while I change, and she already doesn’t have enough time allotted for my visit as it is.” But I didn’t want to change into the gown because I was afraid the instant I removed my shirt, the nurse or the doctor would open the door. And the nurse would think, “Why is she changing when I told her to wait?” and the doctor would think, “Why isn’t she changed already?” And then five minutes would pass, and I would think, “WHY didn’t I change? I had enough time!” Finally, I told myself, “Just DO it.” And I grabbed the gown (fabric rather than paper, which I love!) and started pulling my arm out of my shirt sleeve, and at that exact moment the doctor knocked on the door and came in. 

I immediately threw the nurse under the bus. I’m so sorry to her, she was lovely. But the doctor waved it off as I tried to stuff my arm back into my sleeve. “I like to chat with my patients first,” she said. 

Outside of that humiliation, the appointment was fine. This doctor gives the impression of having a lot more time than she probably does. My old doctor, while still being kind and unhurried, was more of an in, out, goodbye kind of a person. 

How Do I Get Medical Schools to Make This a Mandatory Part of Training?

One thing this doctor did that I really, really liked was after the exam, she said, “What questions do you have for me?”

And then she listened to my question, answered, and then asked the same thing again. She did this three times, and I thought it was such an excellent approach. It made me feel like I should have questions, and gave me space to ask them. Often in the past, I have written a list of the topics I wanted to bring up, and then felt too time-pressured to raise them. Even on the occasions when I was able to gather the courage to ask, I would never get to my whole list because I felt like the doctor was edging toward the door while addressing the first issue. She wasn’t, but she never asked if I had more questions, so it felt more like she was humoring me than actually interested in/available to address what I wanted to know. Anyway, this new physician not only expected me to have questions, she expected me to have multiple questions, and she remained seated while listening to me ask them. It was great. All doctors should do that. 

Suggestion Box

All doctors should also have cloth gowns (in reality, I know cloth gowns and their care are not practical or economical for many practices). They are SO MUCH better than the stupid paper ones. My previous doctor would give you a paper vest and a paper sheet, and I always felt so awful and exposed. The cloth gown actually covers my body.

This reminds me of a Twitter thread? Reddit thread? Buzzfeed article? that I read when surely I should have been doing anything else. Some doctor was opening up a new practice and asked for people’s ideas about what a new pelvic health practice should have/do. (Oh, it was this thread.) I think using cloth gowns was on the list, as were a lot of awesome things like not assuming all patients are female, and ensuring that patient diversity is represented in photos/artwork/literature, and offering a nonverbal way to signal that the patient is not safe with whomever accompanied them to the appointment.

Some suggested cool quality-improvement ideas, like installing a light switch the patient could flip when they are changed. Or putting warmers over the stirrups (my previous gynecologist had socks on her exam table stirrups). Or providing a restroom connected to the exam room for easy changing/washing up. I mean, if a practice is truly building from the ground up and can cover the costs of these things, sign me up!

Someone suggested making the atmosphere spa-like. Which made me laugh and laugh. No matter how spa-like my gyno’s office is, even if they switch to spa-style robes (like another commenter said were available at her gyno), I am never going to enjoy going there. 

Peering Through the Doors as They Close

While I was waiting, in between panicking about whether I should undress or not, I kept reading and rereading the one framed piece of “art” on the wall. I am calling it “art” because it had a photo, I think, of a mother and a baby, and the text was in a fancy script, arranged in short lines like a poem. But really it was information about how skin-to-skin contact is important, and how new mothers should make it clear to their OBs and everyone at the hospital that they want to have at least an hour of skin-to-skin contact with the baby immediately after birth!

This information is familiar to me. I planned to do skin-to-skin and immediate breastfeeding when my baby was born. But when Carla arrived, I only got to hold her very briefly before she was whisked off to the NICU. So this piece of art briefly made me feel very sad about that, that I didn’t get the birth experience that I wanted. I feel a lot less sad about it now, which is nice; pain does fade over time. And then I wondered very briefly what it would be like, if I had another baby. If we would get the birth I wanted.  Oh well. It’s not going to happen. 

The new doctor asked me if I had any children, and if I was planning on any more. And I said, “No, I don’t think so.” And she said, “You don’t think so? Well, if you think you might, you need to get cracking!”

Sure, sometimes – usually when I have fallen into a rabbit hole of Baby Carla videos, or when I find out someone is pregnant, or when I see someone pushing a stroller around the neighborhood – I’ll get a little twinge. Once the endless nausea finally abated, I enjoyed being pregnant. From this distance, the baby months seem precious and easy. And I would like to have a toddler again — they are so cute. (Do you see how my brain neatly skips past all the difficult, sleepless, maddening parts?) Did we make a mistake, just having one? But most of the time – I’d say 99% of the time – I feel like our little family is complete. And I guess with every day that passes, the more irreversible that fact becomes. It feels right, the three of us. But as with almost any situation where walking through one door means that you aren’t able to go through others, I am a little wistful about it. 

Like a Peach or an Apricot or a Kiwi (?)

As long as we are talking about health topics, I will mention that I have two ENORMOUS bruises on my leg. One of them is the same circumference as a Noxzema face cream jar. I measured it in the bathroom and my measuring devices were limited. It’s a GIANT BRUISE, is what I’m saying. Of course, I have no idea how or when or why I obtained this bruise. Based solely on YA/middle grade fiction from childhood, I am convinced it is leukemia. (The websites I consulted were much less apt to jump to this conclusion, and more likely to blame it on my advanced age and thinning skin.) 

I feel pretty confident in suspecting that you and most people reading this post would also jump to a conclusion that would fall into the Imminent Death category. But what I want to know is, are there people who DON’T do that? They must exist, right? Are they all Capricorns? 

I think maybe my husband might be this type of person? He strikes me as a pretty practical fellow. Despite knowing WAY MORE about the many and varying paths to Imminent Death. But then again, maybe he is just good at putting on a Brave Face when confronted with the alarming proximity of his demise. I don’t know. 

(“You just bruise easily,” he says to me, matter-of-fact and exasperated in equal measures. “You always have bruises.”) 

If I have mistakenly assigned YOU my own death-focused personality trait, and you are, in fact, a person who sees a bruise and thinks, “Oh a bruise” or gets a headache and thinks “Oh, let me have some Tylenol” instead of CANCER ANEURYSM SURELY MY DAYS ARE NOW ENDING, please tell me all about yourself and what it’s like to be you.