Gainesville Ramblings

This is a blog, and thus it barely qualifies as writing, let alone formal writing, so I'd not let it bother you.

Sunday, August 20, 2006

I don't recall being an 8-year-old with swimming practice three times a week...

...So why do I have an ear infection?

No really, this came out of nowhere. I haven't been sick. I haven't been swimming. So how did these bacteria get up into my middle ear?

I started on Friday, when I had a headache and the hearing in my right ear slowly got more and more obstructed. Thinking that it was just earwax, I got some hydrogen peroxide, and let it go to work on the cruddy stuff. Nothing happened.

Saturday was one fun day. I woke up tired, with a pounding and pain throughout my right ear. Even my earlobes hurt. Of course, being in this condition, I decide it’s the perfect time to go to Starke to go shopping.

Yes, I said Starke.

I needed to do a lot of shopping, and trying to get into any store here in Gainesville this weekend, with the Freshmen Hordes attempting to get their parents to buy everything they need for their dorm, would have been near impossible. This of course does not take into account the fact that I needed to buy much the same stuff as these freshmen, which would make shopping even more annoying. Plus, after three years in retail hell at Target, including one back to school season in Gainesville, I can do without the crowds all jostling for the last dish rack.

So it was off to the Starke Super Wal-Mart, where the busiest section was the gun counter, wherein you could see many potbellied men with camouflage and Confederate Flag hats on point shotguns at imaginary deer in the distance. I would have found this slightly disturbing if on my way to the Wal-Mart, I hadn't stopped at the Waldo Flea Market.

I've been to many flea markets in my time, and usually enjoyed all of them. There's always the bong shop, which claims that everything there is for tobacco use only. There's the guy selling pirated music and movies, another trying to get rid of baseball cards that no longer have any value. The knife shop, the people who see this as a garage sale writ large, and the many many people selling peanuts.

The Waldo Flea Market is much like this, only much more depressing. I don't know why. It may have been the combination of people in the back, who just threw every piece of junk they could find onto the grass. They were yelling at people to come see the water stained and warped particle board furniture, the rusted lawnmowers, and the toys missing body parts. Overall, it just had an air of desperation (and toothlessness) that sucked the fun out of my trip to the flea market.

But Wal-Mart was good. Got almost everything I needed to make this apartment run, and to cook the food I plan on making. By the time I was done though, I was ready to fall asleep, and to take painkillers for my ear. It was around this time also that I realized I many have an ear infection. I even called my mom, to remind me what an ear infection feels like, since I haven't had one since middle school.

In an effort to get this taken care of as quickly as possible, I went to the Urgent Care Center on Newberry and 53rd. I expected to wait, so the three hours spent in the waiting room were OK. Having spent a life time going to general practitioner offices in upper middle class suburbia, going to a walk-in clinic was a new experience. And surprisingly, everyone was in pretty good spirits, which made it much better. I expected crying kids, people holding bloody pieces of cloth up to giant cuts in their arms, and people yelling at the nurses about why they aren't being seen. But, it was just like every other doctor's office, except for the Evangelical on the television telling me I needed to give my heart to Jesus and very diverse crowd in there.

After waiting for those three hours, it takes the PA 3 minutes to diagnosis me and write me a script for an antibiotic. An antibiotic which I can't take with alcohol. Don't they know this is Gainesville?

1 Comments:

At 8:34 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Could be worse. A classmate of mine found out (initally through the annual TB test that we all have to get) that he has latent tuberculosis. And he has to take an antibiotic with which he can't drink for 6 months. Yeah.

 

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