Day 102: Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Doctor

You may not know this about me, but I'm prone to ailments. I know, in reading this blog, you might see me as some kind of hypochondriac or alarmist, but really I am not. I don't go to the doctor assuming that every pump is a legion or every blood test is going to come back positive for something negative. It's more that, I've devoted so much time and effort into this marathon training, and I want it so bad, that I'm convinced something is bound to go wrong.

Interestingly enough, considering that I'm good for at least three bouts of some kind of infection a year, I didn't really think that that something could possibly a sickness. I realized how wrong I was when I woke up with a nice 102 fever. This didn't really concern me, I have a tendency to raise high fevers, even as an adult (last year the night before our office holiday party I raised a 104 fever - just for funsies). However, my throat was hurting something fierce, and I realized that I had been ignoring it for a few days, chalking it up to lingering allergies. Yes, I found it odd that when I looked at my throat in the mirror, there were innumerable, visible white spots all over it, but I thought it would run its course. It had to... because I had a course of my own... to run. Words are so fun! You know what's not? Strep Throat.

In a pinch, I went to see a family friend who was a doctor near my apartment. We have a casual relationship, mostly because he's known my family for years, and also because I think it's a quiet understanding between us, that I paid for his son's braces with my yearly pneumonia.

He took one look at my throat and actually said, "Yuck." Even in a casual relationship with your doctor, him beign grossed out by your ailment is not, generally, a good sign. He told me that he was 90% sure it was Strep. It looked like Strep, and to be honest, he said, it smelled like Strep.

This was nearly too much for me. I gasped, and said: "It smells like Strep? What? You can't just say that to people!" Bad breathe is a major bone of contention for me, and the fact that I had been walking around with a mouth smelling of puss was much more mortifying than the fact that I had the same malady as your average 7 year old. 

He gave me a heavy duty dose of antibiotics to knock this out of me immediately. Steve recently lost a ton of weight and completed his first triathalon, so he understood the pressures I was facing, and the panic on my face was a clear as the scent of strep in the air. Unfortunately, until my fever broke and I didn't feel like death, I would be out of my training routine. This was getting interesting...



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