The Connector
The Connector
Special to The Connector

Each year we see all the signs at the grocery store, pharmacies and the doctor’s office. We hear the ads on the radio, and if you’re a parent, you get the flyers from your child’s school. So with all the signs, how come I didn’t get one? As I was curled up in bed with a raging fever that had me shivering until my teeth chattered or sweating like I was in a sauna, I asked myself that very question. My body ached so much that my skin hurt, I had a splitting headache, a cough and I couldn’t stop sneezing. After two days, I’d had enough.

I went to a CVS Minute Clinic near my house and, after waiting about 20 minutes, was seen by a nurse practitioner. She asked me about my symptoms, nodding as she entered them into a computer.

“Yep, sounds like the flu to me,” she said. “Let’s swab you just to be sure.”

Swab me? That didn’t sound like fun. The good nurse proceeded to tell me I was to blow my nose into the air and that she would swab a mucus sample from what came out below my nose. Into the air? Really? I did as she requested and held a tissue at my mouth to catch any flying snot rockets. Despite giving her a perfectly good sample just above my lip, she rammed an extra long cotton swab up my nose and dug it about like a garden tool.

“Now we wait,” said the nose-prober. My sample sat in a little vessel with a test strip. When the timer went off, she proudly identified my illness as Type A flu.

“As opposed to what?” I asked.

“Well there is Type B, and A&B, and H1N1 (Swine Flu). Be glad you don’t have A&B. Those patients can’t even stand.”

So in the grand scheme of things I was lucky. By the end of the day I had spent $90 at the walk-in, $60 for flu tests and $98.59 for a prescription of Tamiflu. All of my physical pain and financial strain could have been prevented by a $30 flu shot.

Tags : wellness