When all else fails, laugh

It’s cooled down to a stifling 84 degrees, the central air working overtime. However, walking into the Inferno, otherwise affectionately known as my apartment, was the least of my adventures this evening.

The night all started off innocently enough. After putting in a full day at work, both pushing through an insane workload while simultaneously training the woman hired to be my help, I packed up my bags and headed out the door, heading to my silver Scion, thankful to be heading homebound instead of my usual appointment, which I had canceled due to illness.

It was a cool 95 degrees outside; I thanked God for air conditioning and headed to an after-hours urgent care clinic. I figured six weeks of illness, eight days off work, three infections, vertigo, and no healing merited a change in doctors and an urgent care visit to get the highly desired miracle drugs, otherwise known as antibiotics. I refused to dwell upon the fact that I had met unsuccessful in my pursuit just the night before. Apparently the receptionist hadn’t taken logic 101. I bowed out graciously from our chit chat after she repeatedly told me it would cost me $50 out of pocket to be seen for an illness I had already self-diagnosed because she would be billing it as an emergency. If only I could self-prescribe. Be a doctor’s daughter long enough and you think you have an M.D. after your name.

Sometimes you might as well.

However, with Dad unavailable to call in a prescription (I misplaced Heaven’s phone number the other day), I just walked out, too tired to continue to try to explain that “urgent care” and “emergency care” are not billed the same. Silly me for assuming those in the medical billing profession should know this.

Fast-forward to tonight. On a continued mission to get antibiotics (for some reason, prescriptions are required - quite inconvenient to a woman working two full time jobs as doctor appointments don’t fit into the schedule very well), I called the urgent care clinic to double check that tonight they would in fact accept my insurance card and only charge me the acceptable $10 co-pay for a non-urgent urgent care visit. After six days of coughing more than breathing and causing my colleagues to approach my desk with caution and fling work at me rather than enter my personal bubble, I figured I should take the time to be seen by a professional. Earlier in the day, I had my insurance verified. Not only was I correct, but I was armed with inside knowledge.

So, driving the hour commute at 70 miles an hour, balancing an insurance card in one hand, a cell phone in another, I called ahead to make sure I would not again face the same receptionist demanding $50 for an emergency room visit when there was clearly no emergency, nor emergency room around to merit the charge.

Aghast, I found myself speaking to another receptionist who insisted that I call my insurance company since she didn’t know; I then told her which key to press on her computer system to look up my insurance. (I had done my homework earlier in the day, thanks to a helpful nurse at a related facility.) She ignored me and again told me to call my insurance company to find out. I informed her I had already checked. She said to call again. I was not humored.

At this point, my wicked desire to expose the idiocy of what I was being told flared up, and I started to point out the painfully obvious. “Ma’am, so you’re saying I should call my insurance company, find out what my co-pay is, even though it’s stated on the card, then tell you what they say and you’ll bill me accordingly? “Yes” was her one word reply. I bit my tongue from pointing out the fact that I could lie and would still be billed the same, regardless, and instead decided to humor her and let it go.

Upon finally arriving at the facility, I walked in, exhausted, in pain from coughing for six days straight, and ready to be seen, get the antibiotics coursing through my body, and rest. As I passed through the electronic doors and entered the building, my senses, dulled by my sick state quickly became attuned to wild sirens, flashing lights, doors and security gates automatically descending - a loud voice paging over the speaker system, “Code Red, Code Red. Level One, there is a Code Red.”

“You have got to be kidding me.”

I stood there in disbelief, eyes wide realizing my dream of getting treated tonight was further eroding. Snapping out of it a second later, realizing I wasn’t in the middle of a nightmare, I walked up to the nearest receptionist, asking her something along the lines of what kind of code it was - unsure if perhaps it was a patient who had gone into cardiac arrest and all the doctors were being summoned or perhaps something worse - the bars, gates and doors shutting suggested a lock down.

Three nurses came out from behind a door and informed the receptionist who just sat there smiling that a Code Red meant fire; the receptionist turned toward me and graciously invited me to come behind the counter, join them, and enter into an unmarked door near the middle of the building. Considering I was standing two feet from an outside door, I declined politely, thanked her for the invitation to enter further and deeper into a building on fire, and instead, quickly turned my heels and left the building, with a stream of patients and doctors in white lab coats not far behind.

After seeing everyone exit the building, I climbed into my vehicle, laughed, and decided I would try my luck at another urgent care center. I called Anna, one of my closest friends and former roommate of two years, to tell her of my latest experience in my quest for wellness, quipping to her, “It seems as if I’m not supposed to get antibiotics, hun.” I then proceeded to lose it in all-out laughter as I processed the humor of it all.

I finally hung up the phone, after Anna could barely get in a word edgewise as I was gasping for breath in between laughing, giggling, and coughing. I turned out the parking lot, in pursuit of arriving at the second urgent care center a few miles away, still determined to track down said miracle drugs. Within one minute, I asked God, “Are you serious?” as I found myself in a torrential downpour, creating flash flood conditions with almost no visibility on the roads.

As I was a mile from my home, I made the executive decision to turn into my apartment complex, admit defeat, and call it a night.

When I called Anna to update her, in the midst of trying not to hydroplane, she informed me that it was clear and sunny in the neighboring city. Irony mocked me as I pulled into my parking lot, the reality of getting drenched and wading through muddy waters in flip flops to make my way from my car to the building was not lost upon me.

Thank God tomorrow’s another day.

At least I had the foresight to make a backup doctor’s appointment for tomorrow evening at my regular doctor’s office on the off chance I was again defeated in my quest for the all-elusive antibiotic.

Though perhaps I should rethink future “backup” plans, as this one screams a little too loudly “self-fulfilling prophecy.”

- August 2007

[Update August 2, 2007: I have in my possession the precious antibiotics.  Wahoo!  Mission achieved.]