I canceled Isaac's checkup as soon as the doctor's office opened. About twenty minutes later, as the kids ate breakfast, I checked my throat and saw the telltale signs of strep throat. Great. Thankfully, our doctor's office offers walk-in visits all morning so we loaded up after breakfast and arrived at, you guessed it, 10:00 a.m. The irony of the situation is not lost on me. But hey, we get to do this again on Monday morning to make up Isaac's visit so that's a bonus, right?
The doctor checked me, blah blah blah, and yes I have strep throat. I don't get sick often, but when I do, there's a better than average chance that it will be strep. So far, this was all kind of routine for me. Plus it was a new doctor, and she was gaga over my adorable kids which is always nice. Still, they saw me sitting on the examining table as an open invitation to climb up and lie down and almost fall off the sides amidst gales of laughter, and the whole visit was frankly exhausting. Especially since my main momma tool, MY VOICE, was bringing its C game at best.
Doc called in a prescription for amoxicillin and we headed to the pharmacy. Not before I lingered a few minutes to straighten out a minor blood work issue from earlier in the week because parade. of. incompetence. somewhere in our local lab system. Sweet people, but Lord have mercy. ANYWAY, I'm only sharing this to fully enlighten you as to the joyous nature of my day.
Ok, so pharmacy. Typically, the drive from doc to pharmacy is ample time to dispense a prescription. But not today, no, the good pharmacist techs at Weis Market were positively slammed. I waited in line, took Mikayla to the potty, came back and waited some more, and still when it was my turn at the window I was told it would be a few more minutes.
Grand. Because an aisle full of soap, hair dye boxes, Hello Kitty hairbrushes, and a full display of vitamin bottles are NOT A TEMPTATION to my children AT ALL. And it's not like I need this medication because I'M SICK and therefore not quite maximizing my mothering potential at the moment.
We waited. And we waited. And then the kindly pharmacist lady called me up to show me a giant bottle full of horse pills that was, apparently, my antibiotic.
I'm sorry, what? My throat is so inflamed and swollen that I can barely swallow nothing, and you want me to down an uncoated tablet the size of my thumb?
The main pharmacist, when consulted, looked at me like I was a little slow, and said, "You can cut them in half." (The implied completion of his thought: duh, you moronic girl.)
Oh right, because if there's anything better than a thumb-sized sticky tablet when you have strep throat, it's one slightly shorter but with corners. Why didn't I think of that?
So. While my son destroyed an entire bottom shelf display of bar soap and my daughter casually leafed through an adult glamour magazine, I phoned my doctor's office to see about tweaking the prescription for a smaller form or dosage, and was told she would get my message in, oh, an hour when she was done seeing patients for the morning. I barely held back from asking the receptionist if she would like me to send photos of the pharmacy when my children were finished waiting there for the next hour.
Needless to say, we headed home. The pharmacy tech who helped me originally was very sweet, and offered to call me when my meds were ready. I think she could tell my sanity was hanging by its last thread, which speaks to her incredible intuition because my annoyance and exhaustion were NOT AT ALL obvious.
What's also obvious is that we survived the ordeal, and that the kids are successfully down for naps because I've just had the opportunity to share all this fun with you. It's these moments when I need a gigantic perspective shift, and remind myself that while this might be an example of sharing in the suffering of Christ in order to be made more like Him, this is also NOTHING compared to the suffering of Christ, and is also not worthy to be compared to the glory that will be revealed in us through Him.
Which will be pretty incredibly glorious, if I think back over my lifetime of various sufferings.
Thanks be to God for His sustaining grace, and for designing toddlers to require two hour naps.
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