It started with an annoying flu on Thursday, which seemed to have gone away completely come Friday. But then on Saturday night/ Sunday morning, I felt something go incredibly wrong with my body: my throat started hurting incredibly. Runny nose, phlegm, and almost certainly a fever.
Sunday, if I wasn't drifting in and out of consciousness in bed, I was throwing up, either phlegm or said phlegm getting in just that right spot in my throat to trigger a gag response to throw up whatever I last ate. My throat burned. I couldn't breathe. I could hardly think. It felt like COVID all over again, except I tested negative. Because it was a Sunday as well, most clinics aren't open, and those that are only opened for half a day. I guess no one falls sick on a Sunday, and me being the weirdo I am, didn't get the memo as usual.
So Monday rolls around, and I gave my usual clinic a call, and they aren't open because the doctor is on leave that day. That left me with the more convenient choice of the clinic at a mall much nearer to my home. Now, it's not my first time falling ill, obviously, and so I knew that clinic waiting times, especially on a Monday morning when no one wants to show up for work, will be somewhere in the ballpark of 2 hours, and I'm not about to waste that kind of time sitting among the diseased while staring at diagrams of the human anatomy, so I gave another clinic, which I shall just refer to as "MFC" for now, roughly standing for "mother fucking clowns", a call, asking them for their next earliest slot. Annoyingly, the person at the other end instead told me to install some kind of app, with which I'm supposedly able to take a queue number.
I guess I'm getting old, because I remember a time when technology was supposed to make lives more convenient. Upon downloading the app, I was forced to create an account, which required a password of at least twelve characters, one number, and one special character, whatever that means. And I'm sitting here like, "bitch, who's trying to hack into my account, that has no bank account details and barely any personal information?" I swear, the next time I'm unfortunate enough to have to use that app again, I'm not going to remember my password, and it's just arrgh. Oh, and there are several pages of T&Cs to read through before I can create my account. B I T C H, I ' M D Y I N G O V E R H E R E, hello?! Does being forced to agree with the T&Cs of an app while I'm violently ill constitute as being forced to sign a contract while under duress? Because if not, I'm just imagining a bright and smart future wherein I get stabbed in the chest by a good old fashioned knife, and before I'm allowed up on the ambulance, I'll have to read up every law textbook at the bargain price of 80 million dollars while simultaneously having to learn Arabic just to have an "extra special" character in my password so someone can't steal the data of and subsequently impersonate the long dead.
And that's not even the worst part!
The worst part is that, upon creating an account, I'm forced to key in the "clinic code" of the clinic I'm intending to visit. Whatever the fuck be that? I even tried quotation marks Google searches, and turned up empty, and it's not like the app lets me type in the name of the bloody clinic like a good old fashioned old fart, nor does it allow me to pick a clinic close to me like a smart whippersnapper despite needing my location services for god knows what reason. It was looking to me like the only way I can add a clinic onto my list was to have a QR code of the clinic to scan... which is very conveniently located in the bloody clinic.
So what exactly the hell is the point of the app then?! What was the bloody point of me having to haphazardly agree to all the T&Cs and privacy policies I don't possibly have the knowledge nor life span to read, IF I'M GOING TO HAVE TO WALK INTO THE CLINIC ANYWAY.
Still better than what Americans have to deal with currently, I suppose.
So, I walk in, and after 2 hours of staring at walls and diseased people, I had my one minute consultation that costs 20 dollars, and walked out. The medicine was a huge relief, though I do wish I felt taken more seriously. I don't blame them; it's a first time customer walking in on a Monday morning with clear lungs and subsiding symptoms, surely he must me trying to skip work. One minute. Really? And no PRT tests? And only 2 days MC when I was throwing up and drifting in and out of consciousness just the day before?
Today, Wednesday, is the day that I'm supposedly fit to return to work, but I still don't feel fit to face customers, and my head's still rather foggy, and hence I'd really rather not drive. Helps that I had a nightmare this morning about having a horrendous accident, too.
I was driving along a nefariously narrow and torturously twisty stretch of road, with an abyss of a canal to the left with no guardrails. The road was barely wide enough to drive on, but apparently it was a two way street? A double decker bus turned to face me from a junction ahead, and I tried to make room for it by hugging left as much as possible. It wasn't a quick, reflex action, but rather, a slow, deliberate action, but I didn't judge it correctly, and my left wheels dipped into the canal. Somehow that sent my entire car falling into the abyss, which was wide enough to swallow my car whole, but narrow enough to pinch it still after falling a certain way down.
I was sitting sideways in my car. The steering wheel is bent for some reason. My arms were somewhat trapped. I tried to shut off the engine but I couldn't even reach the button. Eventually, the engine became starved of oil from being sideways and the car shut itself off anyway. I tried to use my phone to call for help, and for some doggone reason, help was just unintuitive to find. I seriously considered just expiring in that ditch instead of going through all that trouble of finding the correct help I needed.
When I woke up in a sweat, I remember staring at the ceiling with eyes wide open thinking, "holy hell, that was a dream?!" Relief obviously washed over me, sure, but I don't ever recall a time where a dream felt so real that I woke up in disbelief that it had been a dream. They've always been fantasies, subconscious ventings, things of the sort. They've never been set in the real world.
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