A sign at the front desk advised anyone who was sneezing or coughing to request a surgical mask, but no one in the lobby was wearing one -- and in a couple of cases, it would have been a damn fine idea. A woman came in with two children, one around three, the other about four -- and the younger one energetically toddled around the room spewing particulates from his mouth and nose in every direction. As he did so, the woman talked with a companion about the coughs, which she said were prompted by an asthmatic condition, not a virus. However, the glistening mucous oozing out of his nostrils looked plenty infectious to me. At one point, the kid tossed a magazine into the lap of another patient, who showed admirable restraint by not screaming in terror and sprinting from the building. Meanwhile, a man who looked somewhere between eighty and a millennium was hacking phlegmatically, and not into his elbow. The woman sitting next to him must have been related, because if she hadn't been, she probably would have been cleaning herself off with a squeegee -- and then attacking him with it.
We've all experienced similar things during previous visits to medical offices. But with the swine flu running rampant in this area, every sniffle is magnified. Next time I have to visit a doc, I'm wearing a body condom and bring a gallon of Purell.
