I'm SO lame...

I've had my current car for, what, five years now? And only today did I realize that I could change the speed of the "intermittent" setting on my windshield wipers.
Good lord.
Okay, so I don't drive every day. Sometimes I go an entire week without driving. But still.

My point? I don't really have one. I just thought it would be nice to start a post about something other than my health.

I can't tell you how nice it was to have a doctor acknowledge that I have a fever.
I can see you now, with furrowed brow, wondering that the big deal is. You stick a thermometer in your mouth, you read what it says. Right?

Here's the thing: "normal" for me is NOT 98.6. It's about 97.4 or 97.6. So if the thermometer says 98.6, that means I have a fever, albeit just a little one.
But here's a sample of what usually happens when I go to the doctor and say fever is one of my symptoms:

Doc: "Well, your temperature's 99.5 degrees. That's not much of a fever."

Me, sweaty: "Well, actually, normal for me is in the mid-97 range, so I'm a tad warmer than you think."

Doc: "But your temperature's 99.5 degrees."

Me, still sweaty: "I know. That's almost two degrees higher than normal FOR ME."

Doc: Blank stare, silence.

I don't bother to point out that I've taken my temperature hundreds of times throughout my life, and got really familiar with my vital signs when my mom was in nursing school a couple of decades ago, and constantly took my blood pressure, pulse, and yes, temperature. Or that it's not normal for me to break out in a sweat while simply standing in my bathroom at 5:15 on a winter morning, applying makeup. I'm tired of having this conversation and being treated like a hysterical female. I'm tired of being dismissed. Why don't these doctors trust that we know our bodies? I'm not one of those people who runs to the doctor every time I sneeze. It takes a lot to get me to go get medical help for a respiratory thing.

So it was a great relief when the doctor I saw yesterday looked at my vitals, and saw the 99 degree reading, and said, all by himself, "I see you have a fever."
I almost kissed him. Instead, I coughed.

Not that we don't already know this, but he tells me it's been a terrible cold and flu season, and that a lot of people have been hit several times, so it's not like I'm about to die (although it has certainly felt like it at times this week...). I simply have some nasty virus, but he concluded that I have some allergy issues that are complicating matters, so he gave me a couple of allergy meds to try, and already, I'm breathing better. And I have some prescription cough medicine to help me get some sleep at night (although all three things I now have are supposed to make me drowsy, and they didn't do much of that last night....).

And for the first time in a week, I didn't wake up in the middle of the night all hot and sweaty. And I've actually been cold at times today, which makes me really, really happy. Our weather's been mighty chilly this week, and I've been hot and sweaty through all of it.

Maybe the end of this thing is in sight...