Festering Pits of Disease

Man, I've been gone awhile. Last Sunday morning around 3 a.m., I started praying to the porcelain god and, even once that unpleasantness had passed, I still felt like crap.

Therefore, I drove my sorry ass over to Prompt Care. I got there around 8:04 a.m. ... four minutes after they opened for business ... and there were already ten to fifteen people ahead of me. Ugh.

I don't know why I even bother going. Even though I pay good money to go, I always feel uneasy about the experience ... embarrassed ... as if I'm going to Prompt Care because my real doctor won't see me. Not true ... I didn't even call to see if they had open appointments. But in any case, I always feel dirty ... like I'm sitting in some free clinic waiting for results from an STD test.

The doctor said my heaving and aching was just a virus, which I suspected ... but no flu, which was a relief. He did give me something for nausea and that seemed to help.

And what did I learn from this experience? That riverboat casinos are a festering pit of disease, or so says Dr. McDreary at Springfield Clinic.

He asked if I'd been anywhere I would've been exposed to viruses ... was I a teacher? No, I answered ... but I did go to Par-A-Dice with my Mom on Easter Sunday. You would've thought I told him that I went out and rolled in pig shit.

He told me there was no telling what I was exposed to ... that casinos are festering pits of disease ... and that if I had to go in the future, to take Purell wipes and make sure I wiped down every machine I touched.

I'd never thought of it that way before, but he's right ... you are touching machines that hundreds of other people have touched and God only knows what they're carrying.

Now I'm starting to feel like that Monk guy ...

I wanna jump but I'm afraid I'll fall
I wanna holler but the joint's too small
Young man rhythm's got a hold of me too
I got the rockin' pneumonia and the boogie woogie flu

Johnny Rivers - Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu