The Magic of Antibiotics

I’m sorry I didn’t post on Wednesday. Two of the kids and I were sick and we had to go to the doctor. (We had sinus infections—who knew three people could get sinus infections at the same time? I thought they weren’t contagious.) And after the visit, I spent five hours tracking down the prescription—seriously, five hours.

After the diagnosis, the doctor sent e-scripts (e-mail prescriptions) to the pharmacy and told me that our prescriptions would be waiting when I got there. It sounded really lovely. Except, it didn’t work. When we got there, the pharmacy had no e-scripts from the doctor.

I called the doctor’s office and was told e-scripts take time to get through (which seems to defeat the purpose). I told the pharmacist, who snorted and told me that e-scripts often get lost in cyberspace. (What do you know, it’s not only query letters and manuscripts that get eaten by the fiend of cyberspace. Apparently, it has a taste for prescriptions too.)

And during the multiple phone calls I made, everyone kept telling me how it wasn’t their fault. And my voice was too sore and raw to tell them I didn’t really care whose fault it was, someone just needed to make a decision and follow-through. Finally, the weight of phone calls (from me and the pharmacy) convinced the receptionist and the nurse to have the doctor send a new prescription.

We finally got our prescriptions. And I took my medicine. It’s been at least fifteen years since I’d last taken antibiotics, so when I woke the next morning and felt so much better, I remembered the magic of antibiotics. Thanks, Dr. Fleming (messy researcher and discoverer of antibiotics)!!




Weird face blind moment (for all my friends who are fascinated by face blindness):


Last night one of my sons woke me (he was feeling bad and wanted medicine). I stared at his face for a second, thinking, "I have no idea who this is." Finally, he said, "Mom?" And I recognized his voice--it was Matthew.