A few weeks ago, I had a crushing headache as well as a runny nose and sore throat. Every winter, I…read moretend to get runny noses and sore throats, and every week (pretty much) I get agonizing migraine headaches, so...I figured-- nothing unusual to worry about. The following day was my day off from work and I went to the pharmacy to buy Coricidin pills, which usually help. Not this time. I felt horrible.
The next day, I was to return to work. As I was eating my lunch before driving in, it occurred to me that I couldn't taste my food, and for the 1st time I thought "Covid." I have a self-test kit sitting on my bathroom shelf. The expiration date was 2 years ago, and I'm not sure I was using it entirely according to the directions, but it tested positive immediately.
A few years ago, in the summer, I got Covid, despite having been vaccinated. My symptoms then were a dry cough and shivers, despite the heat. I went to a nearby pharmacy, paid $60 to get immediate test results, and a sheet of paper for my boss attesting to the fact that I had Covid. I had to stay out of work for 5 days from the onset of the symptoms.
This time, test results from a pharmacy weren't enough. I had to go to my Dr. and get a letter from his office stating when I could return to work. Several years ago, when I called my Dr. to get tested that initial time, I was told they weren't doing Covid testing (and, just for the record; I like my Dr., although I don't like the maddening bureaucracy that medicine in America has become). So, I was anticipating an excruciating psychic ordeal in trying to fulfill that new job requirement on top of the physical one I was already enduring.
Surprisingly, I was told I could come in that same afternoon. My Dr.'s main office is in Stirling (10 minutes from where I live) but he also has another office in Florham Park. I would have to come to the Florham Park location in an office complex, I would have to see a nurse practitioner, and I would have to wear a mask. None of this was a problem.
The location was easily located (directly off of Columbia Turnpike), and parking spaces were plentiful. It would appear there are many Dr.'s with offices at this complex. I signed in after insurance was verified and told to wait. Co-pay was minimal, although they no longer accept cash. I had to use the bathroom, which was relatively clean.
I didn't have to wait long before the nurse practitioner called me into an examination room. My oxygen level was fairly high, and I had minimal congestion in the lungs. I mentioned that I had lost my taste (which kind of freaked me out-- as I get older, and Death starts knitting its shroud up around me, the pleasures I once enjoyed are more and more forbidden to me, and God forbid I lose the capacity to taste and smell food! My brother recently told me the story of a man who had lost his sense of smell and taste and ended up committing suicide when it didn't return). Anxiously, I asked the NP about this (the loss of taste, not suicide), and she said in the majority of cases, the senses of taste and smell return.
It was too late for me to take Paxlovid and I wasn't given any specific dietary, medicinal or other regimen that might make me feel better. It was OK; after a lifetime of migraines, I'm used to "toughing it out" when it comes to sickness and physical maladies. The NP seemed ready to dismiss me without actually doing the official test for Covid (I didn't regard the self-test as in any way foolproof) and she complied at my urging to perform it with seeming reluctance (at least that was my perception), rubbing around my nastily and nauseatingly congested nostrils with a swab. I had some sympathy for her; I wouldn't want to be doing it either. Then again, I'm not a Dr. or a NP.
The next day, I got a phone call telling me I officially had Covid. No word on whether my sense of smell and taste would return. In fairness to them--- who the hell knows?
A day or so later, I was driving behind a truck blowing out noxious exhaust fumes, and I cried out in joy, "Thank God! I can smell again!" It was seriously a great relief. After all, if I can't taste, how could I ever write another restaurant review on Yelp? "The food I had in the high-end steakhouse was as tasteless as the faux-pizza they served at Domino's." I mean...how many cemeteries can I realistically review?
Overall, I'm satisfied with my visit. I got in quickly, left confident in the diagnosis and satisfied with the care I received despite some minor speed bumps, and I would recommend them.
(When I started getting vaccinated at the start of Covid, it was every 6 months before you got another one. Then it became a year between vaccinations, and I figured Covid wasn't quite as serious anymore and I stopped getting them. Bad move. People can still die from Covid. The thought of losing my sense of taste and smell permanently terrifies me. And...oh, yeah...dying would suck too.)
