A Patient's Patience

Allergies are no fun but mine have gotten better since I’ve been getting allergy shots. After years of weekly visits to the doctor’s office for a shot, I graduated to every two weeks, woo hoo! A couple of years ago, I graduated again to only needing a shot once every four weeks, luxury!

Well two weeks ago I was due to get shot. I didn’t make it because work was crazy so I just decided to wait a week. I got an e-mail from the doctor’s office that afternoon saying the doctor suddenly got sick so there would be no shots that day. No problem, I wasn’t going anyway.

Then that weekend, another e-mail was sent from his office to let his patients know that he was still out sick so, you guessed it, no shots. Hmmm, I said to myself. Wonder what’s wrong with Doc. He’s never been out sick for more than a day or two in the 8 years I’ve been seeing him.

An e-mail this past weekend gave the answer. He went into septic shock while at the office! EEK! He was rushed by ambulance to the hospital where he was placed in ICU for a week. But the good news was that he was better and would be back to shooting patients this week. Yea!

I left early from work on Tuesday and arrived at his office to a PACKED waiting room, standing room only. Even though I got there 15 minutes after he started giving shots, I was #36 on the list. Great…….. A quick scan around the waiting room for a magazine was disheartening. I had my choice of Men’s Health, Golf, Parenting, or the stack of gummed on, sneezed on kiddy books in the corner. Dang, it was going to be a long wait.

A chair finally freed up and I grabbed it. Then began to look around to see who had the good magazines and which of those folks would be finished first. I wanted to be ready to snatch it before as soon as it was free. A People magazine freed up first. Yeah, I know, People? It’s a guilty pleasure. It kept me occupied long enough to hear my name called. Yes! Time to get shot. Sleeve rolled up, I walked down the hall to his office and stuck out my arm. But I wasn’t done yet.

You have to wait in the waiting room for about 20 minutes after you get an allergy shot to be sure you don’t have any kind of nasty reaction which can include anaphylactic shock. So back to the waiting room and lo and behold, a new Southern Living was just sitting there in an empty chair. MINE, MINE, MINE!

I was just about done with it when I spotted a recipe that spoke to me. It said, “Fix me for dinner.” A scan of the ingredients led to a mental list of what I needed from the store and I said, “Sure, I’ll make you for dinner, thanks for the suggestion.”

My patience had paid off. This dish was great and so easy to make even with adding chicken to the recipe. Biscuit Boy took leftovers for lunch the next day and said it tasted even better. The recipe is:

Spring Tortellini with Pesto
1 pound fresh asparagus
2 (9 oz) packages refrigerated cheese-filled tortellini
1 (7 oz) container basil pesto
1/2 tsp. grated lemon rind
1/4 tsp. salt1/4 cup pine nuts, toasted
2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cooked

Snap off and discard tough ends of asparagus. Cut asparagus into 2-inch pieces. Prepare cheese-filled tortellini according to package directions. Add asparagus pieces to pasta water during last 2 minutes of cooking; drain. *

Pour off any excess oil from top of pesto container. Toss together tortellini mixture, pesto, lemon rind, and salt. Sprinkle with pine nuts, and serve immediately.

*Note: I had thick stemmed asparagus so I put it in the water with the pasta at the same time.