MOM AND DAD ARE GONE SO ANNA GETS SICK

This was Anna the last time Kari and Mike left town. I didn't take a picture of her tonight because she didn't want anyone to see her face, but she has a huge rash on the left cheek, on her nose, and chin a bit, and it's starting on the right cheek. It was very slight this morning, and she said it itched so we put her lotion on it. However, the rash spread during the day and we decided we'd best get it checked out.

Well, first of all, when you go to Urgent Care if you aren't sick when you get there, you will be before you leave! The place was packed with sick kids, sick parents, sick older people.......boy, did we make use of the hand sanitizer! We sat as far away from everyone else as we could, and because Anna had insisted on bringing along a whole bag of books, we had something to do for the hour that we waited, and we didn't have to look at any of the books all the other kids had touched.

After waiting an hour, the nurse came out and asked us to go to a different department because they were really overrun in Urgent Care. We got into the other doctor almost immediately. He thinks the rash is an infection from the slight runny nose Anna has, and the picking she does on her nose when it's irritated. He prescribed an antibiotic and a cream for the rash.

Off to the pharmacy that Kari and Mike use. I got to sit and wait there, too. Then the aide called me up to tell me they didn't have the cream but would fill the antibiotic. They told me that the cream is very expensive, $50 for a tiny tube, so they don't stock it very often. But we could go to XYZ Pharmacy because they have it all the time.

So we went off to the other pharmacy where all the sick people from the Urgent Care Clinic must have been waiting for their meds! I just dropped the prescription off and said I'd return to pick it up after supper. BAD idea. When I got back there at seven I was number six in line, and within a minute there were six more behind me. And there was a twelve year old all alone behind the counter! I don't think the young man had even completed junior high school! And he was having a tough time handling all the people in line by himself, especially when he got to the gal in front of me. She had two insurance cards, neither of which worked in the system. But she just knew one of them was the right card. He tried again, and neither would work again. She shook her long blond hair out of her eyes and asked if he could look it up under her dad's name. The young man went off for about five minutes and came back and tried another number, which worked. Yeah! Then she had to dig through her bottomless bag to find her debit card. FINALLY it was my turn. I stepped up, gave Anna's name, he handed me the bag with her cream and I was off through the grumbling crowd that had gathered in the line behind me during the more than FIFTEEN minutes that it took the gal in front of me to complete her purchase. Ohhhhhh, I was flustered!

Anna has also been coughing a bit, so we'll watch her closely to make sure she doesn't do what she did the last time Kari and Mike left town. Hopefully we can get her back to 100% quickly. The doctor said the germs don't jump off the patient and on to other people, so she isn't contagious in that way, but if she picked her sores and then touched someone she could pass it on. So I'll see how she's looking and acting in the morning. Hope I don't have to keep her home from school! I need those hours to rest up! Anna is exhausting to say the least.