JUST CHEESE

I didn't have much of an appetite today, so I though I would have a simple cheese sandwich for lunch.

That, apparently, is a radical concept that boggles minds. The lady at the sandwich shop didn't stop at boggle, but without confirming her hunch leapt straight through to sausage! And asked what else. Not anything else, thank you, only the cheese.

Paid. Crossed street, up thirteen floors, back at my desk.

WTF?
Sausage?
Not cheese?

Down thirteen floors, crossed street, endeavored to make clear what the ... 'beef' of my issue was. And she on her part endeavored to grasp what this crazy person was saying, and correct the situation.

Thank you, bye. Crossed street, up thirteen floors, back at my desk.

WTF?
Sausage?
AND cheese?

Down thirteen floors, crossed street. Explained to everyone. Oh, okay, we finally get it, nods all round. A brand new product. Crossed street, up thirteen floors, back at my desk.

I now own a sandwich on which there is just cheese. Nothing else, just cheese.

Some lettuce and tomato would've been nice.

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So why do I have a lunch demand so unusual that it baffled the good ladies across the street? Well, I left work at three o'clock on Thursday (five days ago) feeling quite wankle. By four o'clock I was in bed. By five I was curled up in a tight shivering ball wondering why it was so horribly cold and why the bed was trying to hurt me. Did it suddenly hate me or resent my clear intellectual superiority? Mean bastard, why, I might just do something to get even...... if only it wasn't so buggery cold.

I maintained that position and that sense of wonder till late Saturday afternoon. On Monday I went down to Doctor Jew's office in Chinatown. I was no longer a tight paranoid ball, but I lacked energy and seemed to have gained several inches around my neck.

"Say 'aah'. Again. And again, please. [Palps area immediately under jawline.] My, those glands are nice and swollen, yes sirree, rarely seen them quite so... You've got pharyngitis. Let's get you on some azithromycin."

Turns out pharyngitis is a nice scientific term for "we don't really know what's wrong, it's probably just a seasonal respiratory infection, bacterial we're guessing in your case, not strep cause you aren't in anything like the pain you were in the last time you were here". Yep.

The gamble is this: "if it's bacterial, the azithromycin will axe it. If it's viral, it will probably have been axed by your body by the time you finish the azithromicin. Unless it's mononucleosis - in which case, if you're still sick by the time the pills are gone, we might want to do a test. As an intellectual exercise, of course."


What does any of this have to with a cheese sandwich?

I shall explain. I didn't eat anything from Thursday lunch till Saturday night. No appetite. Then I had half a bowl of rice. Little appetite on Sunday (aggregate total: one bowl of rice). Had a splotch of Indian style rice pudding on Monday for lunch, and a tiny bit of rice soup with chicken bits in the evening. Eh, not much of an appetite. And the azythromicin is playing havoc with my digestive boojums, so I don't want to push the envelope stomach-wise. No bells or whistles, no hecatombs of juicy dead beast. I just wanted a cheese sandwich. And that's what I got.

MORE DOCTOR JEW

Yesterday I mentioned that I would be seeing Dr. Jew today in connection with a sore-throat from the sitra achra. Really, I cannot exaggerate how sore was the throat. Give it a name and call it Darth Vader (which is what I sounded somewhat like).

I mentioned the rapid strep test as a probable option.


Lesson one:
The rapid strep test is not used very much anymore. Some doctors will only use it if they have an kvetshing mother to pacify, and are fairly certain that the test will show a negative. Reason being that if there is sufficient evidence for a bacterial infection, they will treat it anyhow, and a rapid strep test would only confirm what they already knew.


Lesson two:
Do NOT respond to a casual remark said to no one in particular in a waiting room crowded with little old Cantonese people. Despite the evident deafness of at least half the people there, all two dozen of them heard the kweiloh clearly speak idiomatic Cantonese, and for the next half hour I had at least three conversations going on at once. Which, with a sore throat, is painful.

I guess some of them had never spoken to A... REAL... LIVE... WHITE... PERSON... WHO... UNDERSTOOD... A... HUMAN... LANGUAGE.

It's rather like being a carnival attraction.

Do not feed the round-eye, or poke him with a stick. He's real, trust us.

Savage Kitten had warned me that this would happen.


Lesson three:
Chinese do not line up very well. Forming orderly lines is something their contrarian nature utterly rebels against. What they form is a pulsating amorphous mass with a spigot. The person who is next in order is extruded from the spigot. It's like water overflowing, or perhaps sand in an hourglass. It is anarcho-syndicalism in action.


Lesson four:
More than fifty years ago there where two friends who graduated and returned to Chinatown at the same time, where they opened their practises side by side. One practise was a medical office, the other dispensed medicines and filled prescriptions. Their grandsons now run both businesses.

The two men were Jew Shi-Loong and Cheng Tai-Keung. Which the alert observer will find out by reading the framed congratulatory calligraphies on the walls of the medical practise, in which both men are named, and in formal language wished prosperity and a lifetime of approval for the benefit that they will surely be to the community.


Lesson five:
Azithromycin is taken once a day for five days. The most common side effects are diarrhoea (4 - 5%), nausea (3%), and stomach pain (2 - 3%). Less than one percent stop taking Azithromycin because of side effects. There is a Wikipedia article on Azithromycin, which says pretty much exactly what the manufacturer's site says, and what every other internet source says.

The first day one takes two tablets, on subsequent days one takes one tablet. Until the six pack is finished.

And yes, I do feel much better already. I can just feel all those little bacteria dying. And I am enjoying that feeling.

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Thank you, HalfNutCase and e-kvetcher for your commiseration and kind words. And yes, I'll go to the doctor much sooner in future.