Another Day, Another Dollar…Another Few Dollars Lighter

Well, this has been quite the day.

The accursed virus that grabbed me by the throat worked itself up to a high pitch last night. Finally got to sleep little after 5:00 a.m.; the alarm jangled at 6:00 to start a day filled with chores that could not be evaded.

First, it was off to Scottsdale for a presentation to my business group’s 7:15 breakfast meeting. That went better than expected. I pitched the idea of buying ad space on Funny. People actually seemed to be interested, giving me some hope that this scheme could work. I think I’ll have to reach a wider audience of businessmen and women, though—possibly try to deliver the same pitch at the Chamber or other networking groups.

From there, it was down to the client’s office to drop off another set of edited page proofs. Back to my house to call the doctor’s office and then like a rocket to the campus.

Adjunct faculty get no sick leave. If you’re not there, your pay is docked; that you’re pounding on death’s door is beside the point. Because all my face-to-face classes meet on the same days—Tuesdays and Thursdays—if I canceled classes today I would lose one fourth of my pay this period!

Obviously, I can’t afford to have my paycheck cut by 25 percent. So I dragged out there and laid some busywork on the kiddies, sending them to the library to kill time. This left two hours until the second class, allowing me to drive home and try to sleep a little. Naturally this was mooted when the doctor’s nurse called me back. I had to explain that I am not going to make a two-hour round-trip drive to the Mayo only to be told that yes, I have a cold. She was able to figure that out over the phone, and said they’d call a prescription in to the Safeway pharmacy.

Back to campus; deliver the same message to the second section; shovel them out the door. Flee!

Flat out of food for Cassie; last night I cooked her a piece of steak. That not being a viable proposition for the long term, I had to drive by the Costco to pick up one of their roast chickens, which will last her a week and give me something to eat, too.

It’s 10.8 miles from the Costco near campus to the Safeway nearest to my house. Needless to say, every light turned red as I drove up to it, all the way from the campus to the Costco and from the Costco to the Safeway…just as every light had turned red while I was traipsing from the west side of Phoenix to uptown Scottsdale to downtown Scottsdale and back, about 15 miles each way.

Arrived at the Safeway, stood in line (enduring the dirty looks of fellow customers as I hacked and coughed), only to learn that they never heard of me. The doctor’s office had never phoned in. Pharmacist said she would call if and when the prescription was called in. I said I was not dragging back over there this afternoon, because it is unsafe for me to be behind the wheel of an automobile.

Jayzus! In the state I’m in, it’s a miracle I didn’t kill someone. On the other hand, given the number of morons who wove back and forth in front of me and beside me while they yakked on their phones, maybe one could say it’s too bad I didn’t kill one of them.

Moving on… I picked up a pint of berry sherbet, figuring to anaesthetize my tonsils by freezing them. It worked, too. Briefly.

Late this afternoon, the doctor’s nurse said he had called in a prescription for Flonase. A day late and a dollar short, sister!

My car is now down a quarter-tank of gas. That puts the eefus on my gasoline budget. There’s no way I can run that boat from now until the end of the current billing cycle—April 21—on just one more fill-up. The three-quarters of a tank I had to buy on Monday cost $53, more than half the monthly budget.

Interesting how even a minor ailment drains your pocketbook, isn’t it? If I hadn’t forced myself to put in an appearance on the campus—done at some risk to life and limb, since I really should not have been driving—I would have lost about $120. The pharmacist suggested that I try the syrup form of Mucinex DM, which she thinks gets into some people’s systems more efficiently. So now I have two bottles of the generic form of that (rather useless!) stuff, one full of horse-pills and one full of cherry syrup. I wouldn’t have bought the sherbet if my throat didn’t feel like someone stuck a blowtorch down it. The extra round trip between campus and home plus the unplanned trip to the Safeway guaranteed that I’ll have to spend more than $100 on gas this month.

As a practical  matter, the common cold costs the U.S. economy big-time. In 2003, a University of Michigan study alleged that the combined annual cost of all our colds is around $40 billion a year, “substantially more than other conditions such as asthma, heart failure and emphysema.” As a group, we Americans were spending $2.9 billion annually on OTC nostrums and another $400 million on prescription drugs for symptomatic relief, and wasting $1.1 billion on antibiotics, which have no effect on viral illnesses like colds.

I haven’t bought the prescription yet and may not. Its common side effects include dizziness, headache, nasal irritation or burning, nausea, nosebleed, sore throat, and vomiting. The only one of those I don’t already have is throwing up, and I don’t think I need it, either. So that’ll be a few bucks saved.

What gets into doctors? Do they not have access to the Internet? How hard is it to type “Flonase side effects” into a search engine? For that matter, how hard is it to read the manufacturer’s notice, posted prominently online: “you should know that fluticasone [i.e., Flonase] may decrease your ability to fight infection”? The stuff is indicated for allergic rhinitis, not colds, a condition that itself comes under the heading of “infection.”

Anyway, between the schlepping around and the expenditures on OTC drugs and the potential cost of a contraindicated prescription drug, I’ve probably spent as much as I saved by forcing myself to traipse to the campus through a rhinovirus haze.