Two Days Rest

Well, it has been my dubious privilege to be living in Costa Rica during the outbreak of the swine flu. Even better, I managed to snag myself the amazing cultural experience of getting sick in Central America while a potential pandemic thinks casually about sweeping the globe (very casually, it seems to have not even gotten up and had its morning coffee yet...). Regardless, I woke up Monday morning feeling as though I'd spent the weekend backpacking through the jungle sans sleep (which I hadn't) and with a throat lined with something akin to sand paper. The weather here has just turned and the rainy season will soon be fully upon us so I figured it was a good chance it was just allergies. I didn't want to overly alarm my host family so I didn't mention anything until I was sure I was coming down with a cold.

In the intervening three-ish days, I have contracted your good, old, garden-variety, stick-it-out-til-you're-better cold. My usual response being: force fluids, sleep lots and take more hot, steamy showers than you can count so just maybe my defective sinuses will not become infected. But there's a wannabe pandemic on the loose so instead, to ease the worry of my families everywhere, I got to do the run-around with the University's health department. What fun.

You cannot make an appointment via the phone. You must show up, in person, ID in hand, as early as possible and hope that you're close enough to the front of the line that they're are still available appointments that day. And if there's not, well, sorry, come back earlier tomorrow. Tuesday morning didn't work, they were full. Got up at six o'clock this morning, made it down there by seven and finally got in to see someone at nine. Once you're in, it's a quicky easy process, but I'm thanking my lucky stars that I don't have something really bad, because otherwise it would have been a truly miserable morning sitting around waiting to talk to someone.

All said and done, yep, just a cold. The doctor sent me off for some of the usual cold drugs and literally wrote me a prescription for two days rest which I'm to present to my professors. Actually, that part struck me as sort of cool. Where I would have stumbled my way through classes because, well, "I'm not that sick," it gives me a chance to actually: Stop. Do nothing. And... wait for it... get better. Which, when you think about it, is not something the North American culture is really so great at.

Anyway, I'm now sitting at home, feeling the congestion in my sinuses slowly increase and dreaming longingly of a hot shower. Due to some interesting mechanical complications, my shower is not cold, but neither would I call it lukewarm. On the bright side, I have almost four boxes of tea, courtesy of my mother and boyfriend which will definitely be pulling their weight in the next few days.

Also, my apologies for any poor grammar, hispanicisms or other brain slips. I'm not entirely on top of my game right now. I have a doctor's note if you'd like to see it.