A New Drug

Wednesday morning when I woke up I noticed I didn't feel well. I stayed home and tried to sleep. By now I realized it was another upper respiratory infection. I can never actually tell when one of these starts, but I do recall being unusually depressed early last week which is usually an indicator of some physical aliment.

Thursday morning, I called the doctor a few minutes after 8 and got an 11:00 appointment. Which meant that I was hesitant to go back to sleep. Within five minutes of arriving at the office, I was escorted back to one of the examining rooms.

Formerly the building was home to an investment firm who sold it and the furnishings to the doctor. So the offices became exam room with the original wallpaper, prints and decorations in place. These may be the only examining rooms in the world done in a neo-Roman-villa decor. (Neo-Roman-villa is my best estimate; it might actually be retro-Pier-One.)

Almost always when I know I'm going to have to wait for something or someone, I take along some reading material. In this case, I had a copy of the December, 2001, "Wired" magazine. My interest was an article on autism. Last week after reading "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time," a story narrated by an autistic boy, I started reading about autism. And I happen to remember the article.

There was a long wait before the doctor appeared. After I indicated my problem, he suggested that it might have been triggered by an unusually high ragweed count of the past week. We talked for about ten minutes, and he left to check on samples. The nurse returned with a bag of samples for high blood pressure and congestion and a prescription for a new antibiotic "Ketek."

Next stop was the druggist. Then I had lunch. Lastly was a visit to the grocery. When I finally got home, I was exhausted. But no matter what I did I could not go to sleep.

Later, I checked on-line for information on Ketek. I found little beyond the standard patient information listing, a copy of which was included with the prescription.

Ketek's most significant benefit may be its usage in cases involving drug-resistant bacteria. Since I've had so many problems and taken so many antibiotices over the years, I've been concerned about encountering a bug that is drug resistant. For the last five or six years, I've discovered that initial treatment drugs have very little effect on my upper respiratory problems.

Since this is a new drug and one that I've not taken before, I'm curious to see what happens. Within the last couple of hours, I've noticed that I'm feeling remarkably better. In fact I feel better than I have in several weeks. Now if I can just keep from overdoing.

PAX!