S'not home!


Advertisement
Published: October 3rd 2008
Edit Blog Post

(Yeah sorry...gross title/play on words there but I'm determined to come up with something clever for each one and it was a combo of the snot of the sinus infection and wanting to be home when I'm sick. You can laugh at the grossness..its okay!!)

So I got sick. I have a sinus infection (quelle surprise!). Something was going around school and then I had to wait for a half hr outside in the rain for the bus on Friday, so if there was any chance of not getting sick that probably eradicated it.

I went to the doctor with Karen, a CEA director, and that was an interesting experience. We waited 40 mins to see the doctor, who saw me for a very short time. He simply asked my symptoms, checked my throat, ears, nose, and listened to my breathing, and then declared that I had sinusitis. In America, it typically takes a lot more than that to get medicine. Granted, he only have me antibiotics for 8 days, so not a big deal, but it was super simple. I don’t feel like I got a very thorough checkup.

Vero, my host mom, is sick too. The combination of seeing the doctor for myself and seeing her deal with her sickness has been an interesting look at how the French deal with illnesses. Very went out Saturday night, drank, smoked, and stayed up until 5:30am! She was sitting in the kitchen drinking rose, smoking, coughing and telling me how terrible she felt and how she shouldn’t be going out. How ridiculous is that?!? Life cannot be held back by being sick here. And she kind of pushed me into going out sat night (which ended up being a disaster..not to her fault though), despite me being sick. My mom would NEVER encourage me to go out when I’m feeling sick! In fact, quite the opposite!! Someone’s social life cannot be burdened by a little sinusitis or bronchitis (what Vero has) here in France! I’m not trying to be ethnocentric but I really feel that the more conservative way we handle health concerns in America is probably for the better. We don’t just hand out medicine like candy and heed little caution to how we treat our bodies (in general, and especially when sick!). This is not really a comforting place to be sick.

And then my host mom still went to work yesterday (she worked all night) and I was awakened this morning to her yelling and fussing in French about how everyone is sleeping and she can’t do housework at 8:30! I decided to skip my one class today and sleep in because I’m sick and I think it’d better to miss one class and catch up/get a head start on getting better than to lug through more and stay sick. My mom would agree. My mom would NEVER wake me up and yell at me about how she can’t do the cleaning when I’m sick. You let sick people sleep!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Are you fucking kidding me?! And I didn’t even know that she wanted to clean my room! She normally does it on Saturdays but she decided to lay low this Saturday because she wasn’t feeling well (though she felt well enough to go out..?) so she decided to do it then! And she has a fever and bronchitis and had just come back from working all night! WTF is wrong with these people?!

Clio was over so I went with her to her house. I’m there now. We just hung out and watched Friends for most of the day and I slept a bit. It was nice and calm. Then Justine came in crying about a fight she had just had with her mom..awesome. And now, at almost 8pm, I get a txt message from Vero telling me that I should have told her that I wasn’t coming home and that I am very rude. She was supposed to be working today and if she called out because she is sick (which would be the first sensible thing I’ve seen her do!) then she didn’t tell me and how was I supposed to know?! When she isn’t there in the evenings and I’m going to be late I text message her and she always says I don’t need to let her know because she’s working, so I didn’t do that tonight because I thought she was working!!!! Whatever I do, no matter if I think I’m doing something right or have no idea I’m doing something wrong I end up doing something wrong. Oh yeah, and she tried to clean my room on Monday and couldn’t because I hadn’t tidied it up BECAUSE I DIDN’T KNOW SHE WAS GOING TO TRY TO CLEAN IT!! She left me a note about it. All these little notes and text messages about what I’m doing wrong are driving me crazy. I guess I need to talk to her and tell her to explicitly tell me when she is working and when she is not (which I had but I guess it is changing, her schedule? Or maybe just I need to make sure she tells me when she is having a weird day off (like a sick day or sometimes she gets off or works when it is out of the regular schedule). She is really pissing me off with the irregularities and then getting mad at me!! If I don’t know when or what I’m supposed to do how can she be mad at me?!

And the way she just roams around the house yelling to herself drives me up a fucking wal!! It makes me want to introduce her to duct tape by shutting her mouth with it!!!!!!!! I get it! You said it once, I heard you, why are you yelling again and again and again and again and again to YOURSELF?!?! It is sooo fucking annoying!! I’m not really sure if it is her or a French thing. I should ask around and see what other people’s host moms/grandmas do. It makes it impossible to be around her! Insufferable!! Yes, that is a good work for it - at times that woman is insufferable!! Both of her daughters don’t want to live with her and find her so difficult. Quelle surprise, encore! I wonder why! I’m really getting to see it now! And she is worse with them! At times she can be very nice and friendly (although she NEVER stops talking - whether she’s mad or happy hah) but at other times I wish I lived anywhere but there. And it is only lately that she has shown any anger/frustration at me, usually it was with the other girls but it was still really awkward and uncomfortable (as described earlier, like I’m a child in a house where the parents are getting divorced). I just feel so frustrated that it’s like whatever I do wrong she freaks out about (and even things I had no idea I did wrong), that there is a lot of miscommunication and misunderstanding and the heart of things, and that what I do that is good is not acknowledged or appreciated at all (even in comparison to her daughters who do nothing around the house. I did all the dishes last night…sick Abbe. Not Clio or Justine! Mais, c’est typique).

Being sick just really makes me want to be at home. I want to be home in my lovely, big, warm bed, with saltine crackers (which you can’t find here!) and ginger ale, tea, and other people and thing that I know! Being sick somewhere where you aren’t really comfortable is the worst!! Especially at the moment because I feel like if I go home it would be really awkward and full of tension with Vero and I would be less comfortable there than I am here (even though that is MY bed with MY stuff and that’s where my toothbrush and my ANTIBIOTICS are!! I’m missing my night course of antibiotics to be here..i had to make that decision but I didn’t really feel like going back..esp once Vero showed she was all huffy still). I will take two antibiotics tomorrow morning when I go back (and I pray Vero isn’t there!) and hope it isn’t detrimental. I’m becoming rather French and disregarding my health here. But I’ve fallen asleep and forgotten to take my antibiotic before and you still get better…just takes a little longer. Which I really don’t want but oh well.

Not everyone has a sinus infection but everyone at school has this thing going around that is starting in your throat and sometimes moves to other places (next, typically, your nose. That is what I started out with). There are only maybe 150 kids in my program and we are all in a small space so it is spreading quickly…fucking Europe! Now I see how the plague started for realz!


Advertisement



Tot: 0.069s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 9; qc: 48; dbt: 0.0403s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1; ; mem: 1.1mb