Th Urgent Care nurse chuckled yesterday when we asked if they had some sort of punch card deal available, you know, 10 visits and the 11th is free?
Here’s the thing, we weren’t joking. And we’ve probably earned ourselves a free visit this weekend.
Between silly careless mistakes in the kitchen, to reoccurring infections, to now the latest incidents, I feel like I am now on a first name basis with the staff at the Urgent Care clinic, and we’ve only lived here two years, and only three months of those two years have we had children.
But now the latest epidemic spreading through our house is not the stomach bug, not some nasty cold, no, it is what Satan thought would inflict the greatest amount of pain on Job. It is what God used to let his people go. That’s right, we’ve got the boils. Please don’t think we are gross or dirty. If you came into our home any day but today, you would probably be able to eat off the floor. Bailey does, at least. And we do have several working showers in our home that get used daily. And we try not to share food with others, and are vigilant about telling D to take his fingers out of his mouth, particularly if he has just touched a trash can. But somehow we’ve gotten them. The best we can figure is that D brought them to us from his old home, because he had several pop up shortly after he moved here. They were painful, but went away with antibiotics. Two weeks later, one showed up literally covering the entire back of my thigh (please don’t be too amazed at how big that must have been, I’m a little insecure about my thighs). One Urgent Care/lancing visit later, and I was on the mend. Until like 4 or 5 have popped around there since, and boy are they not fun, especially the one that was cultured yesterday. I can’t even get in and out of the car without wincing. Now Nathaniel is the latest to get hit. Whatever D went through was bad, whatever I went through was worse, but Nathaniel, his has been record breaking so far. An entire swollen hand and thigh later, and we’ve spent the whole weekend at multiple visits to our friendly neighborhood Urgent Care. For whatever reason, pain medication is only making Nathaniel nauseous, rather than taking away the pain, and he’s laid up in bed this morning rather than at church, which would have been impossible for us to go to anyways since we were at the doctor’s all morning. Correction, we were at the doctor’s and the pharmacists’ all morning. I would recount all that went down at Long’s Drugs, but it would take far too much energy to relive that in my mind. Let’s just say we were there for almost an hour, the clerk was really stressed out with life, and in a last ditch effort to keep the kids calm, we all ate some grocery store croissants right there in that nasty waiting area, while Nathaniel had his head between his legs to keep from fainting from the pain, and keep his food down. Shudder.
Oh, and while we were in the waiting room at the Urgent Care, S looks at me and says, “I have this weird bump on my leg.” I almost burst into tears right there.
So, the adults are on a two week cycle of antibiotics. We have some expensive soap we have to use. I think we’ve spent close to $60 these last two days on prescriptions and ointments. I have to change the sheets daily (are you kidding me!), have fresh towels every day, never re-wear our clothes without first washing them in hot water, and I’m not really supposed to shave my legs (riiigght). Oh, and pack up our apartment to move this Saturday, which may or may not happen if Nathaniel does not have a working hand.
You may be thinking to yourselves, “and they’re still gonna go on vacation tomorrow?” and you would be justified in being concerned. Thankfully, however, we had decided to cancel our trip earlier this week. We didn’t want to, we really wanted to see all of those people who we love, but it was too much and a really bad time to leave, and now, I really don’t know if we could have gone anyways. Nathaniel was given a note to take two days off of work, which came at a good time, because the main day he works each week is Sundays. You almost have to laugh that a thing as small as a boil can be so disruptive and painful.
Alright, well, it’s time to hobble myself over to the washing machine and get something washed. Goodness knows we’re gonna have enough laundry to do these next ten days.
