Hello Pneumonia!/Halló lungnabólga!

Sooo… being on Day Five of my illness, and seemingly not getting any better on any front, and possibly getting worse if anything, I called the health clinic this morning and made an appointment with my General Practitioner (GP = heimilislæknir or ‘home-doctor’).

Why wait until Day Five?  Well, it’s been my experience, with child-patients anyway, that doctors don’t really start “doing” anything until Day Five of Fever.  Up until that point, it’s possible to get a strep-throat-swab and a polite chest-listen, and then they tell you it’s probably a virus, and that you should come back in a couple of days if it hasn’t cleared by then.  A Five-Day-Fever on the other hand has a tendency to cause a slightly serious look on their faces.  So Day Five it was.

When I entered the health clinic, I was asked if a medical student could observe and since I’m a glutton for sacrificial behavior (up to a point anyway) I said ‘Sure’!  I was a little bit surprised when the receptionist called out to a couple of young people sitting on a couch behind me ‘Who’s turn is it?’  The girl stood up, and followed me to the waiting area.

Being incapable of not participating in small talk, I found out that she was a first year med student, and that indeed she knew the only two other first year med students that I know of (Insert: 1st year med school in Iceland, actually contains only medical stuff).  We kept on chatting, and then it was time for the examination.

I quickly got the distinct feeling that the doctor considered my cough contagious (“Turn your face to the wall as you lie here on the bench and I poke you in the stomach, please…”) and after having been poked, listened to and prodded he told me he suspected pneumonia, but couldn’t hear anything to confirm it.

So after a quick-y electrical heart test (oh, where they put all those leads everywhere and see how regular the heart beat is) that looked good (the “Japanese machine” even said so!  I kid you not, that’s what they call it!) I was off to a second location for an X-ray.  Yes, my health clinic does not sport a X-ray machine.  Boohoo.

I drove myself to Domus Medica (changing lanes was a little bit exciting with the slight amount of dizziness) and parked myself in the X-ray waiting room.  It was pretty busy, so I had to wait a good 20-30 minutes and felt very happy to have my lovely Android phone with me.  That meant that I didn’t have to touch the yucky magazines.  Ugh, waiting room magazines always give me the creeps…

After the X-ray, I shuffled out, took a right turn and entered the cafe for some food.  No sooner had my warmed up sandwich arrived than my GP called me and told me that yup, this was pneumonia, and that whether or not it was viral or bacterial, some penicillin was advised.  He put the prescription into the ‘nation-wide-prescription-database’ and I left my warm sandwich to walk in the door opposite the X-ray facility to let the pharmacy there get started on my prescription.

A mostly-warm ham/cheese/pinapple sandwich later, I got my drugs, stopped by at the bakery, and have now parked myself in Anna’s bed, again.  How little things change.

Thankfully, Finnur’s parents will again be hosting Bjarki overnight and driving him to daycare.  I even had the presence of mind yesterday to hand over two sets of outfits, so he should be fully clothed.  My doctor tells me the fever might persist until Thursday, but hopefully these bugs will be sensitive to this drug.  Right now it feels vaguely like more phlegm is coming up than before when I cough, but it’s hard to say.

So that’s where things are at right now.  Consider yourself up-to-date. 🙂