The Care-receiver

It was a windy Monday night. The trees were howling and bending over, as if trying to fight the wind. My dad was driving me to the ER, slightly rushing. I was in the passenger seat trying to focus on breathing despite my swollen throat. We get there, do our turn of waiting and the staff finally checks me out. What I assumed were interns check out my throat. One of them groaned when they saw the state of my right tonsil. Apparently it was so swollen that my uvula, the thing hanging in the middle of my throat, was practically invisible. They sent me out into the waiting room once again to wait for a specialist to prescribe me the proper medicine. After minutes of struggling to breathe normally in the disease-filled room, I finally hear my name called and I am lead to the “treatment room”. There sat one woman barely able to keep her eyes open from pain and another stuck with an IV. Once again I wait to be treated and finally a seemingly nice nurse came, her angelic demeanor overshadowed by the two gigantic needles in her hands. She lead me to a small room that seemed to be where they draw blood. In here she explains that the doctor ordered a shot of antibiotics and a shot of steroids. The catch is that it had to be shot through my behind. Ten minutes and two very painful, and humiliating, shots later she sent me back to the treatment room with a saintly smile, as if she did not just shoot a needle into both of my cheeks. There I struggled to sit down, the medicine had sent a burning sensation to both sides of my back and legs. After the medicine has had time to set in, they discharged me with a prescription for god-knows-what and send me home with a painful bottom and a not-so-swollen throat. All in all it was a surreal experience, from the bright lights of the waiting room to the saintly, and somewhat condescending, nurse. I’m just glad that I was finally able to breathe and eat properly.