corporeality

I have been tending to my corporeality. In two days, I managed to tend to the wardrobe needs that arise in the frigid Midwest, get my hair cut and my eyebrows waxed, and hit up the Student Health Center. In order to remain registered at my graduate school, I have almost no option other than to continue to pay for health insurance, even when abroad. All the time I was in Botswana, I was shelling out for a health insurance plan I could hardly use because so much of the student health plan is focused on the SHC. Now that I'm back in close proximity to the SHC, I intend to take them for all they're worth.

I was surprised at how happy walking through a hospital made me. I was almost giddy. This has to be some weird post-field phenomenon. I wanted to stop and talk to people about infectious disease. I know I smiled when I walked past a sign about the family medicine program orientation. I quizzed my doctor about whether they used oral swabs to test for HIV. I quizzed the nurse about latent tuberculosis diagnostics. I really wanted to ask what the standard post-exposure prophylaxis for HIV was, but I also didn't want to annoy the people with needles in their hands.

I handed over some blood and urine, and got a flu shot and a ppd in return. I have ambivalent feelings about the possibility that I might have latent TB. If I have it, then that could mean nine months of isoniaizid. But part of me is intrigued by the possibility of having to deal with (and assiduously document) nine months of adherence to INH. Is that sick? I know this sounds like taking participant-observation too far, but it's not like I intentionally contracted TB just so I could experience treatment...

At any rate, we shall see soon enough. My appointment to have the little red splotch on my left arm examined is 9am tomorrow.