I Skipped the Waiting Room

Remember that cold I alluded to back in early January, the one I claimed had “broken”? 

Well, 24 days later, illness holds onto me with its steely claws. Sore throat. Cough. Congestion. An evolving variant of what hit me earlier.

The earliest I could get an appointment with the nurse practitioner or doctor in my “medical home” was February 24, and I couldn’t wait that long: I’m not sleeping, I’m tired, and having a constant cough is debilitating.

So I decided to chance making an online appointment at the Boardwalk Clinic with SkipTheWaitingRoom.com, something I’d tried to do several illnesses ago, but had always failed at because all available appointments disappeared mere minutes after the 7:00 a.m. opening bell.

Today I was ready: at 6:59 a.m. 

I started clicking “reload” on the appointment page.

Reload. Reload. Reload.

Just as 7:00 a.m. struck, a booking link appeared: I was, in the blink of an eye, already assigned booking slot #13.

From there the process was flawless: I filled in my personal information, gave them my travel time to the clinic, confirmed my appointment via SMS, and was given access to a status page that showed me a constantly updated window when I could expect to receive an SMS to leave home.

I got the text to leave at 9:38 a.m., I arrived at the clinic at 9:45 a.m., got ushered to an examination room at 10:08 a.m., and saw a doctor about 5 minutes after that.

Diagnosis: my viral infection of yore inspired a bacterial sinus infection. Kindly Dr. Beck prescribed me antibiotics for that (“Amoxicillin/Clavulanic Acid”), I got the prescription filled and (I hope) I’m on the road to recovery.