It's finally a Manitoba winter

We've had snow since early November and only a brief cold snap at the end of November. It looks like Mother Nature is not letting us get away with a mild winter after all. We are -30 but it feels like -40 with the windchill factored in. It's amazing us Tobans stay so friendly.

I have been away from work lately more than I've been here. I worked a total of 3 and a half days since Christmas (I should have worked 9 days). I have been so sick with the cold from Hell that I am consistently surprised by how decent I feel today.

I seemed to finish with morning sickness around Christmas and didn't get a chance to enjoy that as my cold kicked in.

Last Friday (January 5) I went home from work early at 2:30 PM. I thought that the weekend would provide me with much needed rest and recovery time. By Monday morning I was much worse. Jeff could hear my wheeze from almost 10 feet away! My mum drove me into town at 10 AM to see if there was any way I could get into see my doctor. The receptionist was on some kind of power trip and informed me that there were no appointments available until the next day at 3 o'clock!! I felt as though I'd been kicked but I took the appointment out of desperation. I had to wait for a few minutes for my mum so I sat in a corner of the waiting room and began to softly sob. I just wanted someone with some medical trainging to tell me that I wasn't hurting my baby by being this sick and to listen to my chest to see if this was a bug I could beat on my own or if I needed some help.

Mum came along shortly and we left. She would have marched back in there if I had let her, but I was so upset by then that I didn't know what to do but I did know that I had no desire to throw myself on the mercy of the receptionist again. We drove to pick up Jeff where he was and he and Mum tried to reason with me that maybe I could just go to the ER (it's a small-ish community, and not likely to be busy).

The convinced me. Mum came in with me and as I started to explain my situation to the nurses, I started to blubber. Mum explained that I had tried to get into see my doctor and that I just needed some reassurance that everything would be okay. They just took me under their wings and watched over me. I felt so cared for. One has a daughter who just went through her first pregnancy and understood all of the concerns of a first-time-mommy-to-be. The other nurse came in and took all my vitals and made sure I was okay and reassured me. The only thing she didn't really mention was my lungs. She left the exam room and came back and said that they called my doctor and they would be expecting me right away.

When we got there, the receptionist coldly said, "There's nothing available right now, you'll have to wait." I took my seat. Maybe a half-hour later I got in to see my doctor. He is as wonderful as our local nurses. He listened to my chest and decided that I would definitely need some antibiotics to clear it. He reassured me that as long as I didn't have a fever that all would be fine with Baby. He also told me that even under normal circumstances, he doesn't really like to prescribe antibiotics and that that meant that I really did need them.

The interesting thing, I noticed a family in the ER when I was there and not 5 minutes after I got back to the doctor's office, that same family walked in and was told exactly what I had been told. I hope they are okay too.