I have a cold. I have something phlegmy creeping through my body, swelling my glands and begging me to sleep. A cold. A flu. A whatever this is that is making me sick. I also have Student Health Insurance.To use my Student Health Insurance, I have to go downtown to the Clifton campus to see a doctor. The last thing I want to do when I am sick is hop in my car and go careening down I-75, sneezing and blowing my nose all the while, praying that the truck in front of me doesn’t come to a screeching halt and that the truck behind me doesn’t plow me over.
The adventure doesn’t stop there, though. Now I have the treat of finding a parking place. I’ve only lived here for five years. I’m not very familiar with the campus in the first place. Besides finding a parking spot, there is the unmitigated joy of figuring out which of these buildings might have the health clinic inside.
Did I mention that I couldn’t make an appointment? They only take walk-in patients if you are sick. If you are well, you are more than entitled to make an appointment. Byzantine bureaucracy is at its finest downtown.
Making an appointment is no picnic, either. The Health Clinic is only open until 4:30. As they give me times and dates available, I run through my head which classes I’m taking that day and whether I can make the drive down or not. Most of the people in the clinic have no idea where Blue Ash is, much less that RWC is part of UC. They assume that I am a Clifton student and can walk over to their building in between classes.
And although I have Student Health Insurance, I had to pay for my pharmaceutical needs in full that day. I don’t have checks or credit cards, so I had to finagle with the pharmacist to divide my prescription so that I could at least have three or four tablets to get me through the day until I can go back down with more cash.
I don’t know when I’ll venture back down. I’m hoping this is all a bad dream, and it will clear up on its own in a few days. Until then, I’ll be hacking and wheezing through my classes, trying not to cough on anyone.