I’m very fortunate in that I don’t get sick very often but today is certainly amongst the few exceptions. I didn’t sleep much, as the swelling had now progressed to my uvula (that dangling thing at the back of the mouth) which had swollen so much that I had trouble breathing when lying down. I tried sleeping in a semi-supine position but that didn’t work out well, either. I couldn’t swallow and felt miserable and hated knowing the fact that I still had to wait 6 hours for the doctor’s offices to open.
At 09:00 I was at ABSAR‘s office again in order to ask which doctor they would recommend me to go to. The same medic who had attended to me last time was there and told me that there was a now a doctor’s office in the area, only a few minutes away on foot! I can’t find a web reference to Dr. Phillip – Blackburn, but the offices are right above Budget Marine and when I got there at 09:30 the nurse was there but I needed to wait an hour for the doctor to arrive. I walked around until the appointed time and returned. I was shocked to see my bloop pressure at 190/90 (as were they). My normal pressure is around 120/80 with a pulse under 70. They did a second reading of 170/90 later, which was better but still far too high. They attributed it to a combination of the body dealing with pain and something they called white coat syndrome.
Nothing conclusive was found, but I now have a 10-day antibiotic schedule to finish, coupled with a couple of days using an antihistamine (they weren’t sure if the infection might have been caused by an allergic reaction of some sort) and a general NSAID.
After getting and taking my first dose of the medication at the local pharmacy, I returned to Zanshin. There I couldn’t gather the motivation to clean up or do any work at all. So I tried reading and lounging in the cockpit without success. I partially napped the afternoon away and bemoaned my loss of health.
I had a soft roll with butter for dinner, anything harder than that would have been difficult to swallow. After dinner I went to bed and was worried about another sleepless night as the doctor had said that it might take a day for the symptoms to go start to go away.
spoiler alert – I slept 12 hours!