I have just returned from medical clinic at the Village. I’ve never been there before until today. I sauntered in, was asked for my CareCard, filled out a small form and was shown to an examining room.
This being a private clinic, the decor was less clinical than the hospital setting that student health works from. The walls were more colourful and the artwork was a bit more refined. After a wait of a few minutes, in walked a Dr. Russenes. We exchanged pleasantries and I went on to describe why I thought I had whooping cough. He listened intently made notes and then told me he’d be right back. When he returned he had a few plastic bags with him. He told me to test for whooping cough, he’d have to take a swab and that it would be straight out unpleasant.
Great. Well, I told him to do what he had to do and get it over with. He had me lie down on the examining table. In one hand he had a tongue depressor and the other he held what look liked the head of a Q-tip on a really thin and long wire. He held my tongue down with the depressor and swabbed the back of my throat with the Q-tip thingy. He was right, it was unpleasant.
As I sat back up, he inserted the swab into a container and then began filling out the lab form. He was almost done when he realized he had to take another swab. Again? He told me this time he had to go through my nose. Nice. I initially thought this would be better than the throat swab, but I was wrong. He had me look up slightly and then he started to insert another Q-tip thingy into my left nostril. At first it was ok, but then he started to go way beyond where any finger had gone before. The pain started to bloom and it felt like a fire had started inside my nasal cavity. As he went further in, I started to see bright flashes of colour which totally obscurred my vision. I was finally forced to close my eyes. Having gone far enough, he pulled the swab out of my nose, leaving me to wonder if in fact he had somehow touched my brain.
I was told that it would take several days for the lab to come back with the results. In the meantime, he gave me an inhaler that contains some sorta steroid which will help with the coughing. He also gave me a prescription for some antibiotics just in case to prevent pneumonia.
As for being contagious, he said that I shouldn’t isolate myself at this stage of the game, but that I should avoid coughing directly on people. I’ll try to avoid that in the future. So, I’ll wait to see the results of the test.
In the meantime, if you have Flash installed, you should check this out, it’s pretty cool.