Tuesday, February 21, 2012

FHN Fast Stop

Last Friday, we finished a course of anti-biotics.  The sore throats were gone, fevers were down and appetites were returning. Things appeared to be going great until 2.am. Sunday morning.  J was up crying that his ear hurt.  This lasted about three hours before he fell back to sleep and we managed to log about 90 minutes of good sleep before rising to greet the day.  Being up early, I decided to get J and myself moving and take him to FHN Fast Care which is housed inside Shop-ko in Freeport, IL. I looked up their number and called to find out that they they open at 10a.m. The fee was $52. Much more reasonable than the ER and probably faster too, I thought. And we wouldn't be sitting among tons of sick people catching something worse than what we went in with. I decided we would be there promptly at ten, walk in, have some kind doctor check out J's ears and we would be on our way.  Boy was I wrong.

We arrived on time, but apparently I wasn't the only early bird.  We were sixth in line. Sandwiched right between someone coughing up a lung and a nauseous toddler.  We registered with the very nice (but obviously stressed) young lady working there and were told that we would be seen in 60 - 90 minutes.  If we wanted to, we were told we could browse the store. We were given one of those notification things that you get at restraunts when you are waiting for your table and set off to check out what Shop-Ko had to offer. After all, I wasn't about to sit there and get coughed on or catch my death.

$50 later, we wandered back to the check in area and resumed waiting (I still don't know what I got that added up to $50).  At about the 75 minute mark, the woman in line before us at check in came out of the exam room with her nauseous toddler and a bunch of clothes all wrapped up in a blanket.  A clean up in the exam room was called over the PA and a nice young man with a bucket and mop hurried into the room.  The dr. came out and assured me it would only be a few minutes more so that they could clean up a "little situation" that had occured.  I told the dr. to have mop-boy take his time.  I was ready to be done waiting, but I wanted a diligent, thorough clean up effort to take place before we entered that room. After all, we were there for a sore ear. Not the pukies. Although I ended up going home with $50 of unplanned  stuff,  I wasn't about to take home the pukies too.

I must say that when I entered the room, it was very clean and the dr. was very kind to J (We still didn't touch any surfaces and I utilized hand sanitizer when we were done.)  He verified that there was indeed an infection in J's right ear and upon listening to J's chest and testing his pulse oxygen, that he had the start of bronchitis.  He sent a prescription over the pharamcy and we were on our way.  To wait some more.

It took about 30 more minutes for our script to be filled. By this time, J was antsy and hungry, we were both ready to bid farewell to Shop ko. I plied him with some trail mix that I had bought earlier and took his blood pressure in the blood pressure machine that was there (which he found hysterical.) Finally, our script was ready. We collected his meds and headed for home.

Not really how I wanted to spend a Sunday with my boy, but it is what is, right? I am just glad we got him some relief from his earache and are (I hope) on the road to recovery.

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