House Call

So, there has been quite a bit of sickness in the Kovar househould for the past two months. And most of it has been me. I have spent about 80% of the last two months running a fever. Three colds, one stomach flu, and one flu-flu. Lynnae has had two colds, Andy has had one. Charlie has had one stomach flu, one cold, and croup. Nobody has escaped, but nobody has approached my level of sickness any single time. Is it the mom syndrome? You spend so many hours awake and caring for others that you can't get the downtime needed to recover? Maybe...

During that time period I have been to the doctor three times. Once I got nasonex, once I got nada, and two days ago I finally got azithromycin to fight the "severe sinus infection". I was rejoicing the whole way home - finally some antibiotics! I filled the prescription, took it home and took it right away. Later that night I had the worst coughing fit of my life. I was coughing so hard that I could not, for the life of me, catch my breath. I finally starting wheezing. Since Charlie had just gotten over croup, and one thing I'd done to help him is take him outside into the cool air, I figured maybe it would help a normal cough too. So I ran outside. And I don't know if it was the cool air, or me calming down, but I finally caught my breath. And I haven't had another attack like that yet.

Mid-morning yesterday I looked in the mirror and saw tiny red dots all over my entire neck. And my cheeks. And my forehead. And my eyelids. It looked like the dots I get if I cry really hard... but I'd never seen them on my neck. So I called the nurses line. I told them about my coughing fit, about my 4-day fever that had just broken, and about the new medication. They said that they are always careful about red dots as a sign of meningitis. That didn't really calm me down. But since my fever broke, it was highly unlikely that was the cause. They told me they wanted to send a doctor out just to make sure and to check for an allergic reaction to the medication.

Send a doctor out?

Yeah... to my house.

10 minutes later I got a call from the doctor, and an hour later she arrived on my doorstep. She stepped in the door with her kit, and Charlie promptly ran to try to pull stuff out of it. I suggested maybe he get his own doctor kit... which he did. The doctor spent a few minutes playing with the stethescope and blood pressure cuff with him, and got a kick out of his pager. But she thought it was hilarious when he kept working on his friends and then calling her, "Hey doctor kit, come and look!" She mentioned she had never been called a doctor kit before. :)

She spent an hour with me. Yes, an hour. And the tiny red dots? They were from coughing. Yep, I coughed so hard that I made blood vessels pop all over my neck and face. (And inside my mouth.) Better yet - she said they will be there for a few days. At least I do not have meningitis and I still am allergic to no medications.

She also talked to me about my medical history and my family history. She talked to me about my care and my treatment for high blood pressure. She gave me suggestions to have my congenital heart murmur reviewed so that I might not have to take 1000 antibiotics before every dentist visit or surgery anymore. She told me about a medication that I actually can take for high blood pressure AND be pregnant at the same time. Not that we're getting pregnant anytime soon, or possibly ever with our track record, but it is nice to know that there is an option... I had previously been told there wasn't. It was very comforting to hear that she, herself, was a high blood pressure patient that has a healthy baby at home. So maybe that door is not as closed as I thought it was. She did also detail for me the conditions of her pregnancy and the things that she had to do to ensure things went okay.

I have never enjoyed a doctor so much in my life. Or taken such comfort from it. And thanks to Andy's wonderful insurance, it's all covered. I felt like Laura Ingalls Wilder with a doctor knocking on my door. I didn't have to drag my son into a waiting room full of sick people, or drag myself out of the house either. This house call thing is amazing!