I've been sick for about two weeks with cold and flu symptoms and finally decided to go to the doctor. I had been feeling bad but I looked good. Now I wasn't looking so good.  I didn't have an appointment so I knew that I would have to camp out at the office to see if one of the doctors could work me in.  I have learned from experience that you will get in a little quicker if you exaggerate your symptoms slightly when the receptionist asks why you are there.  I have found that terms like "explosive diarrhea" or "projectile vomiting" seem to get their attention.  Little white lies, but when you're sick, you're sick!  If you say it loud enough for the other patients to hear they don't mind you going ahead of them. As a matter of fact, they are glad to see you leave the waiting room as soon as possible.
   I like to  sit next to someone that doesn't look sick at all. It makes me look a little sicker and I can have a little fun, too.  Even though I'm sick I still play a game of seeing how long it takes me to get the person next to me to move. I'll sit down and after a few minutes start to moan or grunt a little.  If that doesn't work I just rest my head on their shoulder.  You gotta do what works.
   Have you ever noticed that most patients in a waiting room don't talk a lot?  I like to ask people what is wrong with them.  I'm sure some people make things up because they don't want to tell you the truth. I make things up, too.  I like to see the expression on their faces when I tell them that I just received an emergency call from the Disease Control Center in Atlanta and they suggested that I come in for a check-up.
   After my exam I leave with a couple of prescriptions, of course.  Prescriptions are simply a note from the doctor to the pharmacist written in Latin  that says "I got mine, now you get yours."  I had to go to three different pharmacies as no one had the medication I needed.  I thought I might have to go to a foreign country to get these prescriptions filled. I hear that Mexico is nice this time of the year.    This pharmacy specialized in "compounding." That's where they actually make the drugs from formulas.  I was impressed, to say the least.  I was curious so I asked the pharmacist about "compounding."  Just as an example, he explained to me that if a patient had trouble swallowing a pill then the medication could be reformulated into a suppository.  That was all I needed to know about that.  I'm not totally sure I want to take a medication that you have those options with anyway.
   When my prescription was filled the clerk told me how much it was for just the antibiotic and I almost fell over.  I told her that it was a good thing that it wasn't a heart medication or I may have dropped dead.  This was a "special" antbiotic you only took for a few days.  Now I am sick.  I need something for nausea.  I asked to see if there were any special instructions.  I was told that I needed to drink lots of water with one of the medications. I asked if they could reformulate the drug so that I needed to drink lots of alcohol with it.  Wow! I may have hit on an idea here.  Feeling better already.

                                      Carl