I’m just peachy. This day was rather mundane except for my cranky mood and and the raging sinus infection.

I’ve really had no energy since I had the flu in August. I suspect that the little sinus infection critters moved into the penthouse sinus cavities—the ones above my eyes.

In early December I tried to get an appointment with my primary care physician, Dr. Deborah Lauridsen. I was unsuccessful, but I got an appointment with a nurse practitioner at the After Hours Clinic. She listened to me and prescribed a week’s worth of a very strong antibiotic, and prescription grade Flonase, which contains a steroid.

For about eight days I felt like I was getting better. But then those germs seemed to laugh and taunt my sinus cavities. One day the sneezing fits returned, and I had them everyday for something like five days. I still could not get in to see Dr. Lauridsen, so I settled for a another appointment at the After Hours Clinic. Boy, was that a huge waste of time.

This second nurse practitioner didn’t listen to me, even though she asked about my history with sinus infections. I told her about my three-month long infection that led me to a real doctor off campus. The student health centers in the 1980’s were pretty horrible. I was attending USF, in Tampa. I told her that the ear, nose, and throat (ENT) doctor discovered I had a deviated septum (they are really common), respiratory allergies and a really nasty sinus infection. He prescribed antibiotics and eventually the infection went away.

I filled her in on the frequency of my sinus infections, including that I’ve had five such infections since February of 2022. I suggested that perhaps my deviated septum has become more deviated, maybe I had polyps…”something isn’t right. I think I should go to an ENT.” She actually agreed with that. She looked up my nostrils and announced that she THOUGHT she saw a polyp.

She sneered when I answered her question about what I use for my allergies, “…store brand Benadryl.” She sneered again when I told her the previous nurse practitioner put me on the prescription version of Flonase. “Oh, I gonna give you something better.”

That’s exactly what she didn’t do. Instead of hearing me about my sinus infection history, she decided I had an allergy attack. She didn’t say that, but I figured that out when I picked up my two prescriptions at the pharmacy. Yes, even after I explained everything about my sinus history, even after she believed she saw a polyp in my right nostril, she still went with an allergy attack theory.

What an idiot.

When I picked up my drugs at the pharmacy—an antihistamine pill that made me itchy, and a bottle of Prednisone, steroid—I was stunned and angry. The pharmacist was dumbfounded too. She triple checked the prescription orders. Nope, no antibiotics.

So, here I sit in my living room, exactly a month after my first visit to the After Hours Clinic, with dizziness, tender spots in my face that correspond with the location of sinus cavities, colorful gunk sometimes coming out of my nose, low-grade fevers and chills, headache, feeling as if knives are penetrating my ears, and zero energy.

Yesterday I did successfully get an appointment with Dr. Lauridsen—for MARCH 14th!!! She’s that booked. This seems to be the trend with Orlando area doctors. I’ve compared notes with my co-workers. They have the same issue getting appointments too. The receptionist put me on the urgent wait list and she told me not to give up because she had trouble getting an appointment with Dr. Lauridsen and got on that list and a couple of days later she got a notification that there was a cancellation and they offered her a much earlier appointment.

Well, I’m glad I made the appointment because this afternoon I got my own notification that an appointment for January 18th was available. I took it. I an scheduled to work that day, during the appointment time slot. I don’t care; I’m going to the doctor. This sickness has screwed up my life long enough. I haven’t even had much of a chance to really get going on the purging and packing I wanted to start before my auto accident that broke my shoulder and tore my rotator cuff. That was August 2021!!!!

I guess, then, this Friday the 13th was actually pretty damn lucky.

I’m grateful for that.