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Caution: Icky medical term lurks below

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By TOM JACKSON

tjackson@tampatrib.com

Published: November 4, 2009

I am not one of those people who, upon hearing the description of some exotic disease, suddenly twitch with several applicable symptoms. Hypochondria and illness-envy are not among my personality quirks.

I have relatives who fit the category - relatives who, in the interest of a harmonious Thanksgiving, shall remain nameless.

To the degree that I am willing to concede having them, my personal obsessions haunt other categories of self-sabotage.

So, when I awoke Sunday morning with blurred vision, virtually no voice and sinuses slammed tighter than Fort Knox, my first thought was not, "See what skipping flu vaccinations gets you?"

Nope. Not me. For openers, I go down this road a couple of times a year, often coinciding with the government-mandated manipulation of clocks, and it never involves that first strain of influenza, domestic or imported.

Interview with the new doc

First comes the sore throat, followed in short order by the stuffy nose, the head that feels like it's been stuffed with cotton and the tickle at the bottom of the throat, where the esophagus plunges into the body's complicated inner workings.

Inside 24 hours, I'm going to be sitting on an examination bench, conscious of not slouching while the latest in a series of freshly minted doctors to pass through my GP's practice shines a pinpoint of light in my cranial orifices and peppers me with routine, one-word inquiries, the nature of which we all know and need not repeat.

Except for this, because there are not many opportunities to get the phrase "green sputum" into the newspaper.

"Coughing?"

"Yes."

"Productive?"

"Intermittently."

"Color?"

"Is the reason I am here. A glorious, technicolor green, bordering on chartreuse."

"We don't like green sputum. Green sputum is nothing to fool around with."

On this we wholeheartedly agreed.

Fighting the good fight
Little remained but for the new doc to scribble out an old-school order: 10 days' worth of amoxicillin pills in a size normally prescribed by large-animal veterinarians. This was followed by a flourish of hand-washing and the ritual sacrifice of a prodigious amount of hand towels.

(It has been my observation that physicians always take at least twice and usually three times as many paper towels as is needed to accomplish even the most stringent hand-drying task; perhaps Nancy Pelosi should look into regulated towel dispensers as a way to cap health care costs.)

And so, as this episode of interfacing with America's health system approaches its close, there's good news and there's bad news. The good news is the Jackson household remains, so far, free of H1N1 symptoms.

The bad news is I still have seven days of Secretariat-sized tablets to choke down to eradicate all the evil bacteria and its ne'er-do-well descendants. Sure hope this doesn't (think: Mr. Ed) requiiiiiiiiire anooooooother rouuuuuuuund.

Keyword: The Jax Files, for Tom Jackson's bonus insights.

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