8.19.20
This week I've flipped from healthcare provider to patient.
Sunday night, right before bed I had a sore throat. It came out of nowhere. I sucked on my favorite Thieves lozenge and went to bed. At 1:30am I got up to get another one. My throat bothered me all night. When my alarm went off Monday morning, I knew I wasn't going to work, since if one is experiencing any symptoms of covid-19 we are supposed to stay home. I did my employee health's online questionnaire and contacted the necessary people at work.
I took a nap, and when I woke up, I was worse. I was really weak, I was having chills, sweating, I had a fever. I must have slept 20 hours on Monday.
I heard back from employee health and they set me up for a covid test later that afternoon.
Tuesday morning, I was so much better, but my throat was still killing me. Now, me, being a medically inclined and experienced patient advocate, I thought to myself, hmm maybe this is strep throat, I should go to urgent care and get a test.
So that's what I did. I still had a mild fever, and turns out, my rapid strep test did come back positive.
So anyways, I've just been thinking, I wish I would have gone to urgent care on Monday for the strep test. I still can't go to work because my covid results aren't back yet, but I didn't need to suffer all day Monday. Even if my symptoms were caused from covid, I guess it just seems weird to me that I wasn't instructed to do anything except the standard talking points. Wash yours hands, quarantine, wipe down commonly used surfaces. I wasn't even told to seek care from my primary physician. So it seems we really aren't treating people until their symptoms are severe enough to warrant an urgent or emergent department visit.
I think I'm going to submit the feedback to employee health that everyone should have an e-visit with a provider after they submit the symptoms screening tool. I think anyone in family/primary care would have been able to differential diagnose me with strep throat pretty easily. Instead it was all covid related.
I can just imagine that this happens for lots of other people, and we're maybe not doing the best job we could be in this pandemic.
