Last Friday (9/15) I had a lovely evening. I met up with friends, they made cookies, we went out to the Pink Cadillac, an American type pizza parlor, and I drew tattoos for 2 or 3 people. The friends were plentiful, the cookies were chocolate chip, the pizza had bacon and corn on it and the tattoos were fantastic (pictures of Voula's and Chris' provided for your enjoyment). A few of us planned to meet up the next morning to visit a winery town 2 and a half hours away by train called Eger.The next morning dawned quite nicely (as usual)
I felt a little funny; my head was a little foggy and my skin felt prickly, but Sarah felt my forehead and declared me fine, so I decided to tough it out. I told Éva I was going to Eger and she packed me a lunch and gave me a 1000 ft bill and asked me to pick her up a bottle of Egribor (Eger wine). We met at the Keleti metro stop at 9 to take a 10 o'clock train from Keleti. Or so we thought. This trip had been the brainchild of Eva, but when I called her to double check our meeting place, she told me she'd been up with a high fever the night before and that she wouldn't be coming with us. So it ended up being me, Voula, Mihály, Amol, Barry, Mandy, Mad.It turned out that the train was more expensive than we thought it would be (still not that expensive... the round trip was less than $30) and was leaving an hour later than we thought it would be. As we stood around trying to decide if we still wanted to go, I started feeling worse and worse. We decided we were definitely going to go, so I bought my ticket (despite feeling worse and worse with every passing minute). There was no where to sit down in the train station, so we went across the street to McDonalds and sat in their cafe and I got tea and put on Voula's sweatshirt to combat the chills I was starting to suffer. I felt a little better after that, but I started considering refunding my ticket. No. I was going to Eger and nothing was going to stop me.
The train trip was lovely and pleasant. Our train stopped in several small country towns on the way; it was refreshing to see a landscape that wasn't Budapest for the first time in a month. I spent most of the train trip reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being and sleeping. I took lots of pictures of the countryside, and felt generally better. Then we finally arrived in Eger and as soon as I stood up I started feeling poor again. I almost considered taking the next train home but decided that now that I was here I should enjoy myself. We went to lunch first and I
had no appetite so I sat in the cafe with them with a ginger ale and took an Ibuprofen Mandy had. Once that hit my system I started feeling much better but I was still feeling generally bad and gross.We spent the day wandering around, me feeling like poo but trying not to bring everyone else down, and exploring the town and the castle. It was quite beautiful and I wish I'd been able to enjoy it more. All I wanted to do this entire day was lay down and sleep under lots of blankets and drink lots and lots of water.
I spent the entire day looking at my watch, counting down until it was time to take the train home. My chills got worse while we were waiting in the train station for our train home. I sat there in my sweater, Voula's sweatshirt, gloves and my scarf, shivering, while everyone else sat in the pleasant 65-ish degree weather.The train ride home was not nearly as pleasant as the ride there; I was shivering violently for much of the trip. I finished my book, napped and spent the rest of the time laying there feeling miserable.
As soon as I got home, with chills, a throbbing headache and general feeling of crappyness, I called Rob and cried for a good while. Then I fell asleep. For 12 hours. When I woke up, Éva was very luckily home. I told her I was sick and she bustled off to find her mercury armpit thermometer, then hustled me back into my
bedroom. I'm not sure what my fever was at that point, but by the end of the day it had been up to over 102˚F and then back down to just over 100. I spent that day in bed, eating small things, drinking lots of tea, with my head and feet covered in cold cloths. "This isn't so bad," I thought to myself, "for my first fever in something like 7 years." But then that night the diarrhea started.Warning: I talk about poop and my emotions quite honestly a lot from here on out. If you don't want to read about poop, scroll down to where I say "No more poop and emotions."
The next morning, Monday, I was awoken by stomach cramps and more diarrhea. I almost didn't bother telling Éva, because I didn't know how to tell her. But then I thought "Maybe this is important... I'll look it up in the dictionary." Hasmenés. I heard that word a lot for the next couple days. I got put back in bed and given charcoal. And more charcoal. And more. Charcoal tablets. First caplets, then solid mini briquettes the size of regular pills. And dark chocolate. All supposed remedies of diarrhea that seemed to have no effect. The second day of being sick in bed was far less fun than the first day. I spent the whole day pooping. Plus my fever was still going relatively strong (not quite as strong by the end of the day). She told me she would take me to the doctor the next day. I got scared, then, at the thought of being so sick in a foreign country, and what if there was really something wrong with me? This whole time I was also stressing about my classes, that were far harder than I ever could have imagined back in the states. I started hoping that maybe there was something relatively serious (but not life threatening) wrong with me, so I could have a reason to go home without being a coward.
When I woke up Tuesday there was still diarrhea, but less, and my temperature was miraculously normal. I started thinking about going back to school and the thought was quite nice. Missing class on the second week of school is no way to start the semester, I have to say. We decided the doctor wouldn't be necessary. I even got out of the house! Éva walked with me across the street to buy crackers and a phone card. Then she checked my temperature again just before I went to bed and it had crept back up to the 100˚ range. She gave me Rubophen (Tylenol) and told me there would definitely be doctor tomorrow.
Wednesday morning I woke up early with a 101˚ fever, which I think was just due to dehydration. Éva didn't think so. She put me in a freezing bath at 6 in the morning to bring down my relatively lowgrade fever. I was not pleased. I was also not pleased at being naked in front of my host mother; I don't care if she used to be a nurse (she was, for 35 years). At 8 we went to the doctor. It was honestly one of the most frightening experiences of my life. Éva told me the doctor spoke English, but the only English she said to me was "do you have a headache?", "do you have any medical allergies?" and "take two tablets in the morning and two in the evening". I was prescribed medication. I wasn't told what they were or even what they treated. On top of that, Éva tried to break in the door while I was using the bathroom in the waiting room to check to see if I had more diarrhea, and pulled down my pants for me while I was on the examining table in the doctor's office. I know she used to be a nurse and I know she was worried about me... but this was getting a little out of hand.
I came home from the doctor and once Éva had left for the day (she spends most of her afternoons at her daughter's house with her grandsons) I called Rob and cried more. Then I slept for the afternoon and called my parents in the evening, crying more. Through Rob, I found out what was wrong with me; the medicine I was prescribed is used to treat traveler's diarrhea. This was confirmed later when I spoke with Éva's (English speaking) daughter on the phone, who relayed from Éva that the doctor thought I had an infection in my belly. Good to know, 5 hours later. Once I got home from the doctor's I was feeling much better physically (though sort of in shambles emotionally). I asked Éva if I could go to school tomorrow and she said no, no, definitely not. I asked her if I could at least go to the Internet Café tomorrow and she said maybe. This gave me a glimmer of hope, since I had had very little contact with the outside world besides phone calls to my parents and Rob since I had gotten sick. She came in later and told me (roughly) "Ok, you and I will go to the Internet Café for one hour tomorrow for breakfast". That was the last straw. I'm 21 years old, I am fully capable of taking care of myself, and when I signed up to live with a host family I did not sign up to be 12 years old again. I called Anna, the student coordinator, to intervene. With Anna's finagling, I was granted permission to go to school the next day as long as I didn't have a fever when I woke up and Sarah accompanied me to school. YES.
To assure that I wouldn't have a fever, the night before I set my alarm for an hour before I was getting up so I could take a Rubophen and drink half a Nalgene of water to guarantee a normal temperature. It did the trick.
My recovery has been going well. My appetite began to return on Friday, the diarrhea is slowly going away, my fever is all gone and my antibiotics have been used up. I've almost finished playing catch-up in the classes I missed and have decided to drop Combinatorics 2 for my own sanity. I realized that hoping I had appendicitis so I could go home early was not a good sign at all, and my workload was probably too much.
NO MORE POOP AND EMOTIONS.
I spent this weekend with friends, doing lots and lots of homework. I spent most of Saturday working on Graph Theory in the internet cafe with Voula, then Saturday night I had dinner with Sarah, Éva and Éva's daughter, Erika (I've met her other daughter, Monika, before, but this is the first time Sarah or I had met Erika), then worked on more homework. Sunday I went over to the boys' in the afternoon and hung out there working on more Abstract. Last night Mad and Bok Choy had a "classy sandwich party" at their apartment, since they have a sandwich press (they decided that sandwich presses make classy sandwiches). I wore my little black dress and heels, (most everyone else dressed up too) and ate a peanut butter, nutella and banana sandwich, and a garlic, lettuce, tomato, trappista and onion sandwich. Delicious times were had by all!
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