Sick in Hungary

No, I don't mean that I'm sick of Hungary, but I'm physically ill.

And I don't usually like to feel sorry for myself, but contracting mono in a foreign country when your contact teacher doesn't seem overly enthused to help you navigate the Hungarian medical system, makes my feelings of self-pity become a little bit more valid than usual.

As soon as my contact teacher found out that the closest doctor spoke English, she decided that I could do everything on my own, forgetting that sometimes those who are sick still need someone there to comfort them and help them through the Hungarian pharmaceutical exchanges/interpreting instructions on how to take medications.

It all started with a sore throat and fatigue. Nothing could really be identified until I had a blood test. I skipped the three days of school before winter holiday and after multiple sighs, my contact teacher said that yes, she'd have to help me get my blood test. We went early one morning relaying back and forth forced banter. She sighed that there would probably be an enormous line of sick, coughing patients wrapped around the staircase, but there was nothing of the sort when we arrived. So we took a number and stood. I told her I'd like to sit down because I was feeling very weak and swallowing was like trying to get down a handful of nails wrapped in sandpaper with the sharp edges poking out.

"Aren't you scared to get your blood taken?" she finally said after a blanket of silence lasting about 20 minutes. Well, yes, I thought to myself, but I'm really trying not to think about it. It's even more frightening when you take a number and after #47 comes up on the digital screen, I'm to go into a room with an open door to get a needle thrust into my elbow vein by a very large woman who speaks no English.

As the needle goes in, I'm trying to think happy thoughts, but I hadn't planned on this woman taking so much blood. I hadn't prepared that many happy thoughts, so I'm replaying the same ones over and over in my head, but each time I do I can't help but look out onto the block of Soviet style flats and thus my happy thoughts become paler with each round. Soon enough its over and my arm is very tingly.

We meet my contact teacher's daughter down in the lobby. She is there to drive her mother back home. As I haven't eaten anything in a while, just had what seemed like an excessive amount of blood sucked from my arm, and am weaker than a newborn fawn on spindly legs, I was expecting a lift back to my flat where I could collapse back into sleep. Contact teacher points to the tram and says, "the tram stop is over there. See you later." I stand huddled at the tram stop under cold gray skies while she and her daughter speed past in their nice warm car.

Ok, I made the last sentence up, but it definitely would have won me more sympathy.

I pick up my blood results the next day without any help from contact teacher. I can't understand a damn word of the gobbledygook on the paper, so I set it aside and wait for my doctor's appointment next week. At this time, my illness has no identity but I'm popping amoxicilin after pleading to the doctor that I think I have strep throat.

Christmas is a few days away and I figure that I'm on medication and have been feeling a little better. Still don't understand why my neck is swollen with bumps in strange places or why the ball of my foot is stiff and hurts to walk on. But I go to Laura's flat in Hernadnemeti for two days. I didn't want to spend Christmas alone.

We spend our Christmas watching DVD's, making sugar cookies, and playing Monopoly. I periodically pass out on Laura's enormous beanbag chair several times over those two days.

At my doctor's appointment the next week, he takes one look at my results and pounds his fist on the desk, "I knew it! I hit the nail on the head!" I'm more distracted that he knows this phrase than whatever he's hit the nail on the head of. He tells me I have mononucleosis. I'm thinking that it would have been good to know this before I traveled elsewhere and had some champagne.

I think I'm over the worst of it, but I've still not heard any word from my contact teacher checking to see if I'm still alive. I had a lovely rash yesterday, but I've managed to fight that off and am on the home stretch to recovery.

It's times like these that make me feel stronger. If I can get through all this, other struggles seem minute in comparison...

And when in doubt of anything else positive to say, it's easy to just chalk this up to a "good story" and "experience."