I still wasn't feeling any better this morning with my cough, in fact I was feeling worse than ever, so I decided to call my hometown doctor to see if there was anything she could do. I talked to her nurse, gave her my symptoms, told her about my pertussis test last week, and she was astonished when I told her that I hadn't been given any antibiotics, cough syrup, or told to stay out of school for 5 full days of antibiotic usage. Unfortunately, my doctor couldn't diagnose me over the phone, so she told me to call the doctor I saw here and complain. So, that's what I did. Well, that's what I tried to do.

I talked to a nice nurse who upon hearing that I was a teacher said that she would talk to my doctor right away to find out what was up with my test and if I should be in school or not. She said she would call me back asap. This was 10:00am. Fast forward to 2:30pm, and she hasn't called back. The school nurse is offering to have the state health department call the doctor and pressure him into giving me something because they want to be very proactive about this and not let it spread. I told her to wait until I've heard back from the nurse.

So, I called again. It turns out that the doctor is out sick, and his nurse isn't there either, and that I was talking to a triage nurse in the morning. I leave a message for her, and she calls me back fairly quickly. She let's me know that the doctor was out ill and had my records with him?? The computers had been down that day I was there, and my records had been hand-written and not entered into the computer the next day as they were supposed to have been. She said she would check with the lab on my test and get back to me before the end of the business day.

Fast forward again a couple of hours, and she called me back. The lab had grown my culture in the wrong stuff. I didn't realize there was more than one kind of stuff to grow bacteria in. Anyway, they just realized this when she called about my test, and so they need to completely re-do the test. Have I mentioned that the test takes 8-12 days? She apologizes and then tells me she really doesn't know if I should be in school or not because the sick doctor has my records so the on-call doctor can make any assessments. She is apologizing profusely at this point and tells me that she will get this all taken care of as soon as the doctor arrives tomorrow morning. I asked what would happen if he was still sick tomorrow- no answer, so let's not go there! She also tells me that I should maybe think about taking tomorrow off while waiting to find out what to do.

Am I taking tomorrow off? Of course not! My principal told me that I should only take it off if I wasn't feeling well because she doesn't want to dramatize this whooping cough thing and doesn't believe that anyone will get it from me if I have it because the kids have been vaccinated. Newsflash! I've been vaccinated too!

And people wonder why I continue to do my doctoring in my home town?