I'm drinking gallons of green tea (hot, cold, sweet, unsweetened--you name it) and trying not cough my head completely off of my shoulders. Ugh. I hate the cruds. YES, I know I should go to the doctors, but it's not that simple here in USMC-land. It involves the (cue the scary intro music...) NAVAL HOSPITAL. And I don't mean the belly-button type.
Without a scheduled appointment, you have to go to the dreaded urgent-care clinic and sit with all the other sick degenerates. Worse, if you're so silly as to be sick at night, you have to go to the ER and wait for hours with the REALLY sick people. Ick. Ick. Ick.
This may sound pretty standard to everyone and I agree, for the most part, it is. What I don't care for is the nurse system-- or LACK of nurses. Instead of a licensed RN, most times, you're prepped by an 18 year-old corpsman. EEEK!
This was a rude shock to me when I first encountered military medicine for my yearly exam. I was ushered into an examination room by a downy-cheeked lad of maybe 19 years who told me to remove my clothes and put on the peek-a-boo hospital gown. He then left the room. I thought, "OK, the doctor and the nurse will be along soon." [For those of you not familiar with female annual exams-- if you have a male doctor, which I did, it is usually standard procedure to have a female nurse in the room during the examination in order to prevent nasty lawsuits.] So I disrobed and in came the doctor. And in came the baby corpsman. EEEEK! A thousand times EEEK! He WAS the nurse! Nomally, I enjoy looking at 18 year old men, but when they are substituting for a licensed RN, I'm a little uneasy. When they are taking my vitals and weighing me, I get testy! The worst thing was that I saw that same corpsman two days later at the base gym! How humiliating. I consoled myself by wishfully thinking that he couldn't possibly recognize me while I was in a vertical position...
So, you can see why I am hesitant to haul myself over to the Naval Hospital. They're very good at what they do, it's just that they expect patients to suck up the little indignities like: being weighed in the public hallway, not having RNs, just corpsmen for "personal" examinations, things like that.
I'm trying natural medicine first. C'mon, green tea! Do your stuff! Any other suggestions?
3 comments:
Bwahaha! Sorry honey, you know I feel for you, but I still love that story. I'm due to be violated by my own male doctor next Friday, but, lucky me, with a female nurse! Still though--ick.
My suggestion would be lots of orange juice, a daily vitamin like "Centrum" and perhaps a brisk run to knock everything in your lungs loose and get it out of your system. There will be a lot of hacking and spitting up green crud while you run, but you will feel much better afterward. It has always worked for me, but as TIL is always happy to point out, I am not normal.
Armyguy, I only run to get to a sale or to a large platter of chocolate. No recreational running. I have taken the OJ suggestion along with the vitamins, though. XCircMan, there is NOTHING wrong with corpsmen. I just need to be more flexible! Ha!
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