alobravo | dig deep

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Hats off to the allopathic medical community. On Friday, I woke up with severe nausea, dizzy spells, weakness, pain in my knees, back, and cold sweats. I typically don’t take any otc medication or run to the allopathic MD, so I was swallowing Florastor, or saccharomyces boulardii lyo, a probiotic, like water after a workout on a 90 F afternoon, with peppermint and ginger tea to treat myself. No go!

I fell asleep after the first cup of tea and awoke slightly better, but the pain and weakness returned. I threw up the chicken and salad I bought from Pio Pio on Woodhaven Blvd in Queens, the night before, and I administered an enema in the morning; I eliminated the nausea, but I was still sick with the rest of the symptoms.

I would get into bed and try to sleep; all I could do to comfort myself was bend my knees and waist back and forth. I tried to keep it gully until around 7:30 pm.  I called the medical center and they told me to get there before 9. My wife drove me; she wanted to get checked too because her stomach was acting up after taking some antiobiotics she was on after her rhinoplasty. Her stomach hurt and she got nausea when smelling or eating food.

In the car, my jaw was on my palm. I’m telling my wife to look through the side view mirror whenever she’s about to turn that steering wheel. I was wishing that I was in the driver’s seat, so we could floor the gas pedal and get there like now.

I had to parallel park the car because my wife ran into the curb with space for like two cars. I rushed out of the car and pushed my son’s empty stroller into the medical center, leaving my wife to walk my son about 20 ft behind me. The nurse was puzzled looking at the empty stroller like WTF. “This is my son’s; he’s right behind me,” I said.

The doctor looked like Mr. Magoo in a lab coat; he couldn’t wait to get out of there. He barely checked us. I told him our symptoms, and he prescribed some antibiotics and showed us the door.

We drove to the house and found the ideal parking spot, I daydream about, driving home from the train station every night, right in front of the house. We pull out the stroller and start walking towards the CVS about 6 blocks away to find that the pharmacy is closed. We power walk back like we’re race walking in the Olympic Trials to go to Beijing. We get into the car and drive to two pharmacies that were closed. I’m letting my head hang because I’m too weak to hold it up; “Are you alright?” my wife asks. “Lets take you straight to the hospital.”

“First lets try this,” I said. “If it doesn’t work, we’ll go to the hospital.”

“Why didn’t that dumb doctor just give you a shot to relieve you of your suffering?” she said. “Ooooh!”

Then she starts nagging me on how I had to go to the doctor and to the hospital first, blazey, blah, instead of buying all those supplements at Wilner Chemist. Now I’m feeling like a new $20 dollar bill.

She drives into the Walgreens parking lot. I rush out. Denis, the pharmacy student, is on the phone. He holds his finger up, signaling me to wait. I give him the prescription, he’s still on the phone. I pace, anxious to get my fix.

“It will be about 15 minutes,” Denis said.

I buy milk, cotton, and something else my wife tells me to get. I pay. I get back into the car and lay my head back to wait for 5 more minutes.

I go claim the meds: Ciprofloxacin 500 mg for me; Ranitidine 150 mg for my wife. I pop one with a big purple plastic cup of milk and wake up the next morning like it was just a bad dream.

My wife was still feeling it, however; she was in bed all day. I took her back to the medical center, and she was prescribed something to coat her stomach an hour before she ate. The doctor performed a urinalysis, and he didn’t find any signs of infections or pregnancy. “It may be gastritis,” he found.

On Monday, she was feeling a lot better. So don’t push your insurance cards through the shredder yet; you know when you may have to go allopathic.