Pardon the Melodrama

I want to apologize for not having posted since Granada. And in regards to Granada, I didn’t provide any commentary because, well, the pictures pretty much say everything. Granada, for me, has been the prettiest part of Spain we’ve seen thus far.

Anyway, since then, I’ve been ill. (Are we really surprised? No. No, we’re not.) It started out as just allergies…a stuffy nose and a cough…nothing I can’t handle, right? Wrong. The stuffy nose completely took over, and before I knew it, breathing through my eyes seemed to be the best option (because if I breathed through my mouth, my lungs would give way to a hacking cough.) So, I took to my bed, and if I wasn’t blowing my nose or leaning forward with each convulsion of my chest, I was sneezing, eating, going to the bathroom or sleeping.

Then, just as things started to look up and I thought things couldn’t get any worse, they did. I woke up Friday morning, and the moment I opened my eyes, they began to sting. And then came the tears. But no, these weren’t tears of sadness and they most certainly were not tears of joy. So then, why were my eyes crying (and I say my eyes because I was most certainly not crying…my eyes must have been feeling sad that day)? Honestly, I still have no idea…

So, I was sneezing, coughing, crying, blowing my nose, not breathing, etc. But then Sunday, (God’s day, mind you), I woke up feeling better! A miracle! My nose was still stuffy and I still had a cough, but the crying had stopped along with the sneezing, and my cough no longer made me feel like my lungs were fracturing my ribs from the inside. I had more energy, and I started doing some homework, and I thought things were getting better. God’s day was good.

But God’s night....oh, God’s night….God’s night was so not good to me…

I was lying in bed on Facebook when it happened. (Maybe all of this is punishment for my consistent presence on the life-consuming social networking website??? No…God made man and man made facebook…so…facebook=good...right? Anyway, I was totally minding my own business, thinking that the next day, I would finally be able to make it through a full day of classes without wanting to faint at least 5 times. I went to get up to go to the bathroom, and that’s when it hit me. When I tried to stand, I nearly lost my balance. My feet quickly corrected my body, but my head still hung slightly to the right. There was an enormous amount of pressure on the side of my head, and that’s when I realized I couldn’t hear out of my right ear…

You can imagine the confusion/panic/fear/frustration/anger that surged through my body at this point. The reason my nose wasn’t stuffy at that moment was because the mucus…had drained…into my frigging ear!

I was completely defeated. My body felt better, but I couldn’t hear and I couldn’t focus and I knew I had an ear infection. Maybe I should have listened to my host mother 3 days prior when she said I should go to the doctor. But what good would the doctor do? I’m allergic to pretty much every effective antibiotic known to mankind. So, when I go to the doctor, they diagnose me quickly but then spend the majority of the time pondering over my allergies saying, “This is going to be difficult…” over and over again before they finally prescribe me something they “hope” I’m not allergic to.

So at this point, I have a cough, an ear infection and death in Spain seems to be looming on the horizon as I convince myself the antibiotics they prescribe will most certainly kill me. At least my nose isn’t stuffy…?

The next morning, Encarni takes me to the doctor. She’s one of our…advisors (for lack of a better word) here. She’s a tiny little fireball who smokes nearly a pack a day, speaks Spanish at the speed of light with such charisma it hurts, and has the tightest, jet black curls I have ever seen. She sees me and asks, “¿Cómo estás, maldita?” I just grin and shake my head.

The taxi ride consisted of me looking out the window half the time with the other half of the time trying to make small talk in Spanish so Encarni at least knew I was alive. I know I shouldn’t have wallowed in my self-pity for so long, but by this time, I had been sick 7 days, I was going to be sick for at least another 7, the weather was gray and the doctors were going to kill me. What choice did I have?

And just as I expected, the doctor at the clinic looked at my allergies and said, “This is going to be difficult…” the only difference being that she said it Spanish. Great. So now, I’m difficult in two languages. Perfect.

Finally, I chose to take an antibiotic that (although it’s in the same family of an antibiotic I’m allergic to) was a better option than penicillin… because I would have DEFINITELY died from penicillin. With this one, the worst that can happen is my fever spikes and I break out in hives. So, it was fever and hives or death. What a choice to make, huh?

So here I am today, ear infection and all, hyped up on decongestants, eardrops that could potentially burn off my ear if I’m not careful and Ibuprofen. I’ve made it to class and am now watching as students, whose shoes I will wear in a weeks time, are getting reamed by our professor for not knowing their facts. And if they aren’t getting scolded, they’re getting interrupted. Great.

I just need to make it through April…