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
