Sick and Tired

This past week has been a bowl full of unorthodox. I say that as a euphemism because what I really mean by ‘unorthodox’ is misery. While I’m a bit disappointed that I had to get sick over the last week of the trip, it definitely made for a memorable close to the semester.

This past Tuesday our little group left for our last field trip as a class to Bohemia to finish out our time together before we all went our separate ways. My perceptions of the trip may be a bit different from everyone else’s though, due to the fact that I was horrifically ill. Our first day in Litomysl was a good introduction to the southern Czech Rep, as we got a delightful cityscape, a tour of a beautiful church, and some top-notch native cuisine. After calling it an early night, we were off to Kutna Hora to visit a truly fascinating church adorned with the bones of over 7000 human skeletons, a sadistically intriguing experience.

From there though, it all went downhill for me. Thanks to the US healthcare system, I now know that what I have is mono, and I had been treating it in the Czech with hot tea and ibuprofen, so in hindsight, it really comes as no surprise that I broke down in tears after the church because the pain was too much to handle.

Essentially the rest of Bohemia for yours truly was spent motionless in bed and that really needs no elaboration, so let’s instead take a moment to talk about my encounter with the Czech healthcare system. On Thursday morning while my peers were off touring the silver mines, I mustered the strength to drag myself out of bed and head to the hospital in Cesky Krumlov with our professors Jan and Martin who were kind enough to set up an appointment for me.

I’m not entirely sure that an appointment was necessary though because I think I could have just ordered drugs online considering the thoroughness (or rather lack thereof) of the visit. Considering my symptoms, I was relatively certain I had either strep throat or an ear infection, both common maladies in my past, so I knew what to expect going in. Thus, when all I received was a blood pressure check, heart monitor, and a request to stick out my tongue before the nurse (not even the doctor) decided she was ready with a diagnosis, I was a bit dubious. Is two minutes really enough time to determine what’s ailing me? I inquired out loud whether or not there were any more tests that needed to be run and was assured that they had all the information they needed. I was handed a box of penicillin and told I was free to leave.

Well, unsurprisingly that didn’t really do much for me, so I had to make some changes to my end of semester plans, namely changing my flight to fly home to the states May 25th instead of June 6th in search of adequate healthcare because I was advised against travelling anywhere without English-speaking hospitals. And of course, I was phenomenally miserable so the prospect of home comforts was an appealing notion. Which brings us to now: having been home for a few days now is a bittersweet experience, as one might expect. While physically I am in immeasurably greater condition having received an appropriate diagnosis and the medication to follow, I remain emotionally salty about the fact that I had to miss two weeks of traversing Greece and the UK to lay bedridden in parent’s house until I recover.

Nonetheless, all this free time has given me a lot of time to reflect on these past few months, and not even a little bout of mono can’t taint all the amazing memories I’ve made throughout my time in dear sweet Cesky Republica.