You Get What You Pay For

I have the flu.  Well, I think I have the flu.  That is, I diagnosed and am treating it myself.  

“But Mister Baatard,” you might be saying, “you’re in the Army!  Don’t you get free medical care?”

Well, sort of.  Being in the Army entitles me to make appointments with Army doctors at no cost to me.  If that is your definition of free medical care, then yes.

I’ve been staving off some kind of bug for several days now.  Last Thursday it began to get the better of me, and I called to make an appointment.  After some arguing and finagling I managed to get an appointment.  So I got in and laid out my symptoms:

Inner ear pain, both ears

Body aches

Sinus pain

Dizziness

Swollen lymph glands in throat

Sore throat (hoarse)

Dry cough

Nausea

I wasn’t running a fever at the time, which might have made the difference.  It was about 8:40 by the time I was actually seen.  The doctor came in, gave me a very quick look, and determined that I just had a cold.  She prescribed mucinex and ordered one day of light indoor duty and no sit-ups.  

I’m not kidding.  I went in there feeling simply awful and this was her treatment plan.  What kind of a course is this?  I can do push ups but not sit ups?  As for light indoor duty, I work in an office.  I’m a career counselor.  The heaviest thing I move all day is my mouse.  

So I dragged myself back into work the following morning and drudged through my day, feeling increasingly worse.  

I think that had I been given quarters (a sick day in the Army) on Friday, I might not have been laid up all weekend with a raging fever.  

I had a mind to go back to the doctor but, with shabby, half-hearted treatment being the hallmark of my first visit, why should I expect anything else?

So I took myself to the store and got myself some over-the-counter flu medicine.  If I wasn’t running a fever Thursday night, I sure was Friday and Saturday night.  I was absolutely miserable.  I’m still sick, and probably will be well into next week.  But what am I supposed to do about it?  I can go to Sick Call (the clinic) during duty hours, be treated poorly, and sent packing with under-diagnosed symptoms.  Or I can go to the emergency room after hours, be treated even worse, and be sent packing with orders to go back to Sick Call.    

All I know is that the last time I got decent treatment at Sick Call, I had a broken rib.  That’s what it takes to get a doctor to take you seriously, I suppose.

Am I going somewhere with this?  I don’t know.  I don’t even know if this is coherent (still running a fever).  I think if I were more lucid, this might be a commentary on socialized medicine.  Free health care isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  The moral of the story is this: You get what you pay for.