After taking my Advair, I started feeling really chilled, shakey, short of breath, and light-headed. My rescue inhaler does give me the shakes from time to time but this was extreme. I called the clinic and they said they could get me in at 2:45. I told them I needed to see someone sooner and she said to come down to the ER. The attending physician (thankfully) had some spare time so he saw me at the clinic instead (which saved me $30 of co-pay). It took him all of 3 minutes to diagnose me with a bad sinus infection which I’ve apparently had for two months. (This would explain me sleeping 13 hours a day.) He also ordered bloodwork (confirmed the infection), a chest x-ray (get a baseline and make sure I don’t have any bronchitis), and a pulmonary output reading (baseline and also to see if the nebulizer helped).

The diagonosis: a sinus infection and a reaction to one of the meds in the Advair. He replaced the Advair with Flowvent, which I know that I’m not going to react with and he gave me some Zithromax to get rid of the sinus infection. (I hate Zithromax because it rips up my stomach but it’s one of the better ones that they can give me that won’t give me massive panic attacks.) He also gave me some Singulair to see if a maintenance med will help and he got me more of the nosespray they gave me for allergies.

So why the “medical stupidity” in the subject line? This visit would not have been necessary if the doctor I saw last week had paid attention and not just thrown pills at me. She didn’t check my face, barely checked my breathing (it was the nurse who gave me a peak flow and the doctor just said it was normal, which means nothing because my peakflows are higher than average). She also didn’t see if I was reactive to any of the meds in the Advair (I’d had both before one had made me vomit).

Jon taught my Confirmandi tonight and I got to chill with my O.C’s (Original Cats — my boys) and correct faith statements. My kids (or at least those who have turned theirs in) have written some really excellent and profound things. Their insights on living a Christian life are better than the ones I’ve heard from some adults! I think they enjoyed having Jon teach — he’s a little more laidback than me and he told them stories about growing up as a PK.

I had to pay bills this morning and this is what I discovered:

Case #1: MCI
They messed up switching our account over when we moved and deleted the mileage program we had with Northwest Airlines. I’d asked them if they had and they promised to do it. Apparently, THEY SCREWED UP!!!!!!!!!!! Lost mileage because of their stupidity: about 1500-2000 miles before the benefits kick in again. Considering we’re only with them for the mileage (it gets us closer to free tickets), I think I’m going to look into someone else.

Case #2: LMH Health Systems
This is the hospital where we lived in Newark. They are under much fire because of incompetent hiring practices and mistakes made in patient care. (In my case, they gave me Demerol [made me vomit uncontrollably and dehydrated me] which is in the same class as codeine [which I am very allergic to] and then they sent me home with Percocet which has a codeine derivative. The only reason I didn’t end up worse than I was is that I read the label in my drugged state and sent the meds back.) Apparently, their ineptness extends to their billing department. They neglected to change the billing address on our account (as well as making sure the *names* were correct — they gave me Jon’s last name and apparently can’t seem to figure out how to change it in the database) and when I realized I hadn’t seen a bill from them in a month, I called. They said they’d sent one out and were about to declare us delinquent on our payment schedule. I explained to them that we’d moved two months ago and that we had done the address change thing four times on the last two bills. (In other words, they screwed up because they neglected to do anything other than credit the check. It’s not like this is hard.)

Why oh why are people this stupid handling my information?!?!?!?!?!?

50 points to anyone who can tell me the origin of the names of those days. 🙂

Flambéing Rose Petals
Jon and I forgot to order palm branches to dry and burn to make the ashes for today so we got some old roses from the florist and decided to dry the petals and burn them for ashes. I dried out the petals, but they wouldn’t light on fire. We tried everything from cooking spray to vodka and nothing would light them. We tried doing this in the middle of the kitchen (mainly to avoid that wind that “sweeps down the plains”) and all we got was smoke and ash floating around from the paper towels we burned to try to get the fire going. (We got ashes from the people with whom we dined that night so all is good for today.) Note to self: save palm branches from Palm Sunday this year! (Well… or order in time from Augsburg Fortress.) Now to weave the stems into a crown of thorns for the service tonight…

Pancakes, Clergy, and Liqueur
We were invited to a Shrove Tuesday pancake supper by two pastors in Jon’s conference (who happen to be related to some people on my blogroll) and it was absolutely lovely. Supper was fabulous and completely bad for me. I tried Bailey’s for the first time and enjoyed it — it was probably good that I had all the bacon or I would have been really inebriated. The company was lovely and it was kind of nice that people assumed that I was also a pastor. (I did feel kind of bad when I had to explain that I was in process, not quite ordained yet.) The drive home was pretty uneventful except for missing the turn from US-12 to US-59 and having to find a turnaround place in the pitch black prairie.

Ash Wednesday… Thus Far
I woke up this morning with an asthma attack and found out that my inhaler was almost expired. I got a doctor’s appointment and had to explain to the doctor that yes, my peak flow was above average for my age and height but it was low for me. (I tend to be 100 above normal. I wasn’t all that impressed with her because checking my nose, throat, and lungs was kind of an afterthought for her when it’s pretty important to check for any signs of bronchitis with someone as severely asthmatic as me.) I came home with lots of meds to treat allergies, a new rescue inhaler, a prescription for Advair (now that I have prescription insurance and only have to pay $20 for it instead of $120/month), and a new spacer for my rescue inhaler. We’ll see if it does anything. Now to de-cat the upstairs and clean the dining room for my first year Confirmation class…