Naughty doctors and coping with winter

If the weather continues to get this haphazard, I’ll have to move to a really hot place between

April and August each year, or learn to hibernate. Nairobi is cold enough without adding the sewage factor. Dust is not simple loose earth but filtered sewage. The air contains smoke and pollutants that could cause silver to rust.

So anyway. June, July and August has had me in and out of hospitals having tests carried out for

fever, headaches and general discomfort.

I've got so used to lab technicians telling me:

-I need to get some blood out of your finger-

Other times it's a vein on my left arm

and  after the normal tests for Malaria, Typhoid, HIV.

I look at the Doc with hopeful eyes.

-Is it TB?- No.

-Is it H1N1?- No.

It's an infection, are you pregnant or breastfeeding?(she had asked that before the test)

No,what are these for?

She has prescribed antibiotics and worm tablets

-If you don't feel better go to the referral hospital- she says, removing her coat.
 It's lunch time and she really has to go. Never mind there is a queue of patients.

Why naughty doctors? Because corrupt is their main adjective. Uncaring? No, it is not a doctor's

job to care in this century. That is why they are so free to throw about disease words like,

underlying problem, pneumonia, lack of calcium, meningitis. They have no idea what that does to a mind like this one..

There is no way I could go to the referral hospital. When the problem started, I spent a whole

morning and a half queuing, because others with connections in the hospital would come in and get help to cut in line. When I finally got to see the Doc, she said, handing me the lab request:

-Don't go here, you'll take a long time, go outside the hospital to the lab across, the prices are

the same-

I hate such blatant disloyalty, so I decided to go to the hospital's lab anyway but the commotion

and disorder was just as in the waiting bay. No particular number system just patients scrambling at a tiny window trying to get noticed.

I ended up in a private hospital, and after repeating the tests the doc informs me I have a

Bacteria infection. So I donno what bacteria infection is but to describe it, it is  combo of sore throat that won't go away, a hacking cough that starts the minute I lay my head on

the pillow at night, eyes get infected at some point and you wake up heart beating so bad coz

you're not sure if they have Braille copies of your favourite writer.