The Doctor Will See You Now

It turns out I wasn’t making excuses. The “cold” that I was suffering through during the half marathon, which has kept me home from work all week, and which is still causing me suffering now, was more than just a little cough. Though I was trying to convince myself that my health was improving, a pounding headache in the night and the green mucous that I’ve coughed up every morning made me decide enough was enough. I finally went to a doctor. I was a bit nervous – not knowing where to go, how well I could communicate, or what to do about insurance – but all turned out fine. Well, fine is a relative term. I was diagnosed with a bacterial infection, which is what I figured but was stubbornly trying to overcome on my own. The doctor took about 5 minutes to look in my nose, throat, and ears, and then I was presented with a bill roughly equivalent to $80. The antibiotic was another $80 on top of that. In a country where most things are less expensive than in the United States, those sums were difficult to swallow. But, the antibiotic went down just fine, so hopefully I will start improving soon.