strep throat, condoms, and being targeted by jesus

I woke up on Thursday morning with raging strep throat. When you get strep approximately four times per year, you get pretty great at recognizing it and immediately dragging yourself to Urgent Care.

I arrived and went through the all-too-familiar process: sign in, wait, attempt to not pass out, get called back, step on the scale, tell the nurse that I have strep, listen to her speech about how I shouldn’t be so quick to self-diagnose because I might have mono or tonsillitis, raise my eyebrows at my very large, very strep-ey medical file in her hands, say nothing, go through my symptoms, do the blood pressure thing, the thermometer under the tongue thing, and finally, the strep test thing.

Lay down, attempt to not pass out, meet with the doctor, hear that oh, by the by, I have strep, hold back from yelling “I fucking told you so” at the nurse, listen to the doctor discuss how I should consider getting my tonsils out, tell her that omg! she’s the first to ever suggest that! and ask her if she’s going to pay for it, watch her start to write out a prescription, until she stops, saying, “you know, antibiotics interfere with your birth control pills.” I tell her that I’ve been through this drill many, many times (why aren’t they reading my file??), and that yes, I know all about it.  She hands me the prescription. I get up. She reminds me about back up birth control. I stare at her. I walk to the reception counter, I pay, I open the door to leave, she yells after me, “use condoms!!”

Which is when I stop and think, “what the fuck?” I mean, what have I done to make this doctor think I’m such an uncontrollable slut that she has to remind me THREE TIMES about alternative birth control methods? There’s nothing in my file about STDs, it’s not like I come in for repeat chlamydia treatment or anything. So yeah, what the fuck?

I walked out confused and left for the pharmacy. Drugs in hand, I walked back to my car and saw that in the 20 minutes I had spent waiting for my prescription to be filled, some asshat had come along and put ridiculously bright pink real estate development fliers on all the cars in the parking lot. I fucking hate when people do that and got to my car ready to pull the bright pink paper off and tear it up in defiant protest. Except there wasn’t a bright pink flier on my car. No, slid into the windshield wipers on my car was a newsletter from the Tony Alamo Christian Ministry.

Um, WHAT THE FUCK?  Obviously, I proceeded to FREAK THE HELL OUT. I mean, where was my real estate flier? Why did the Jesus people only newsletter ME? Maybe they didn’t, I thought. I took a deep breath, temporarily calmed down, and walked up and down the entire parking lot aisle in search of other newsletters. Nothing. It was just me. JUST ME.

Maybe the doctor called them? Maybe she’s FOLLOWING ME? At which point I gave up and thought, “thank heavenly testicles I’m already in therapy.”