
Over the past week I have had what I think is probably a strep infection. Unlike the two head colds I nurtured last winter, my efforts to fight it off with Emergen-C and good intentions failed, and I caved last night and went to the after-hours clinic at my doctor’s office. I saw Sherry, one of my favorite PAs, who was amused when I said, “I need a shot of Solu-Medrol and a script for Levaquin.” But she knows my wife Abby and me well, and she knows that I am knowledgeable about my own medical situation.
With a butt full of steroids and an e-script waiting for me at the pharmacy, I was in and out in less than ten minutes.
Still, it takes time for this stuff to work, and I was coughing up a storm, so by 9 pm, Abby had become so annoyed with trying and failing to watch M*A*S*H with me on Netflix that she sent me to bed.
Full of enough cold medicine to kill a rhino, I slept mostly soundly, interrupted by sudden coughing jags. At several points in my sleep I dreamed about a 15×15-foot pewter cube shaped like a meat tenderizing hammer, which I could see from the outside, but in which I was trapped. Each time I poked the inside corner of the cube, it would expand infinitely to 15×15 feet. Medicine dreams.

See? I knew you were doctor-sick. Mend.