Today was the day the over-the-counter sinus medicine I’ve been taking finally stopped working at all. Thus, today was the day I gave up. There are only two days left until I am supposed to climb onto a plane, and the last thing I want to do is arrive in Seattle and promptly throw up on my poor brother-in-law when he meets us at the airport. So today I finally called the advice nurse and made an appointment to see my doctor. It probably helped my cause that my voice still has not completely returned, so I was cracking and squeaky on the phone.

I suppose, in retrospect, I should have given up earlier. But the problem is that half the time I go in for a sinus infection, I am told that it’s a virus, there’s nothing they can do about it, so just go home and suck it up. This, despite me telling whoever it is I am seeing that I get these in waves and that the only thing that reliably makes them go away is antibiotics.

Today, however, was a piece of cake, but that was probably because I actually got to see my regular doctor, and not whoever was on call for urgent care. I told him how long I’ve been sick; I noted my tendency to these sorts of infections, and I also noted the impending plane flight. The nifty thing about this guy is that, unlike the other doctors I’ve seen there, he actually has this habit of *listening* to what his patients are saying, and asking pertinent questions which makes it obvious he’s paying attention. So before I knew it, I had a prescription for antibiotics with nary a fuss at all. Phew. They may be huge horse pill antibiotics and they may come with slightly unpleasant side effects, but if they can make this stupid thing finally go away and let me handle my plane flights without worrying about whether or not my head might explode, I don’t care.