Part II: The Sickening

Remember over here when I told you that I'd update the beginning in several parts? Today is Part II. If this were Sesame Street it would be brought to you by our hard-to-predict cleaning staff schedule at our hotel and the drink, Pimm's. I'm sitting in a pub a block from our "hotel" and sucking back an obligatory drink since I can't be in our room. More on that later...on to The Sickening!

 

As you'll recall, we had a lovely day in the countryside with Claire and returned to London. I was none the wiser, but something was stewing. Monday morning I woke up feverish and generally feeling ill. This was the day we were supposed to go shopping for Christmas presents, and if you know me at all, you know I don't give up a shopping trip lightly. Well, I dragged my ass into the shower; there's nothing a shower and brushing your teeth can't fix, right? Wrong. I dried off and marched right back to the bed and succumbed to the pillows. James didn't know what to make of it, but he's been well trained for this moment and jumped to my aid by getting Lucozade (think British Gatorade) and crackers. With provisions by my side, James left to do the shopping.

Honestly, the rest of the day was a blur of drinking liquid, nibbling crackers and reading the thermometer (good thinking on packing that versus shipping it over). James returned and I tried to rally purely because James had bought tickets to an in-store acoustic session with Gruff Rhys. I didn't get to go. Surprise.

That night I had remarkable sweating and temperature highs, but I greeted Tuesday feeling better than the day prior so I dressed and we went out. It was hard to even remotely enjoy Covent Garden and eventually we turned for home. Things got progressively worse from there. Up until this point my sick had been relegated to fever and "feeling icky" but wonders never cease and I learned the true meaning of collywobbles. Leave it to the British to come up with a cutesy and sanitized word for diarrhea. So now, unable to venture out of the sight line of a toilet, I had to make an even harder decision than the one the night before: do I dare chance getting on the tube and going to the Paul Weller show that we bought tickets for so many months ago? It broke my heart to lay prone on the couch while James headed out to the show. He insists that it wasn't as good as he'd hoped, but I think he was being kind. Paul opened the show with the only two songs I wanted to hear, so if that's really true, I guess I didn't miss much...just, you know, a British rock icon. No big D. *sigh*

In the midst of all of this, I kept trying to self diagnose from my bed. If you can believe it, at one point in my fever-induced hysteria, I looked up H1N1 and sugar withdrawal. Clearly I was going through one of those. My ibuprofen-addled brain couldn't think of any other reasonable diagnosis.

Wednesday was more of the same...sick as a kitten, eating almost nothing, living on Lucozade. Toilet, toilet, toilet. I was beginning to get really worried about how I was going to manage the trip to France the next day.

Thursday arrived and I think it bears pointing out my history with illness. Growing up in my parents' house was a bit of an odd split. My mother is an intensive care nurse, so if you're not hooked up to a ventilator and on death's door step, there isn't much sympathy to be found, but at least she knew what to do. As a shift worker, however, she was asleep all day. My dad, on the other hand, is unfailingly sympathetic and accommodating, however when I was home ill, he was often at work and! more often than not, he just wanted to know, "Well, have you taken anything for that?" I also wasn't home sick often as a child due entirely to my mother's outlook that one cannot possibly be that sick if you're not confined to a hospital bed and that sick days aren't an option. Seriously. My mother doesn't take sick days, or, when she does, it's rare enough to cause concern. So I've grown up with that mindset.

But Thursday I requested a doctor. We had to be on the tube at 2pm (for nearly an hour), headed to Claire's so that we could be at the Portsmouth ferry terminal in time for our overnight ferry to Le Havre. James didn't want to admit it at the time, but he was going over scenarios for how else we could get to Chazieux later in the week, once I'd had a chance to recover. Thankfully, through private care and the grace of some magical Lucozade dragon or entity, James got me an appointment for noon. Let me tell you, I've never been this sick in my life. Ever. James literally sat at my bedside and forced me to eat half a bowl of oatmeal. He was my own little cheerleader and kept up his stream of encouraging words while I weakly spooned this rare solid meal into me. It was incredibly touching and this is when I realised he also knew this was the sickest he'd ever seen me. So we bundled up and went to the prettiest doctor's office I've ever seen. I kept wanting to take a photo to show people, but In my state it didn't even occur to me that I had my iPhone in my pocket until we were leaving, so it's just the staircase.

 

Let's pretend this shows you way more of the building and how pretty it really was all covered in intricate tiles, ok? I was sick. Very, very sick. The doctor was delightful, asked more questions than I expected and had a far more holistic approach than I'm used to in a physician. His diagnosis was a gastrointestinal infection and his memorable statement was, "Welcome to London, a cesspool of disease!" Oh. Um, thank you? So, at the doctor's office in England they can actually get you your pills on site. Like, in the room. So he produced a packet of pills to kill everything in my gastrointestinal tract and then a king's ransom in Immodium. He also prescribed me yogurt. As much of it as I could stand as well as probiotic pills to give me an additional boost at rebuilding all that good bacteria the first set of pills was going to obliterate. 

We grabbed probiotics and started packing for the trip. Correction: James packed for the trip. I laid in bed trying to think logically about outfit choices but really couldn't get past packing my hot water bottle (did I mention I was cold constantly from the fever too?). I downed my Immodium and we headed out to Claire's where she pronounced me as green as she'd ever seen. I went straight to the couch while they sorted out the car. It was pathetic. I was urged through another half bowl of oatmeal and then deposited in the back of her car like some final piece of luggage. 

My travel blanket got lots of cuddle time this trip

The ensuing car ride was also a total blur. I know we stopped at a Tesco (grocery store), but I wouldn't leave the car. So they left me to sleep in the back seat of a car in the middle of the parking lot. Seriously, if this was a thousand years earlier (maybe even five hundred), my clan would have left me for dead. We also stopped at a pub in Portsmouth to get dinner where I joked that I looked like the Ghost of Terminally Ill Christmas. I know, tres dramatic. We have an unhealthy sense of humour where illness is concerned, once again thanks to my mother's career as a nurse. At the pub they kindly made my packet of oatmeal and watered down my apple juice. Truth be told, this didn't go as smoothly as that and it took quite a bit of time for James to explain to them what he wanted. So I ordered side veg as well, you know, to make it worth their while to have a biochemical disaster of a human sitting in their dining room. 

As luck would have it, we were upgraded to a cabin with a toilet on the ferry. I went straight to bed.

 Getting on the ferry - we went up that crazy steep ramp

By the time we hit France I was feeling a little better, but still in a state that could best be described as permanently groggy. Roadside toilet stops aside, I passed in and out of sleep for the entire drive. At this point I still hadn't told my parents I was sick. I figured there was no sense worrying them and, given at my mom burst into tears the first time we chatted on FaceTime once we'd arrived in the UK, it was best not to alarm them.

This guy was my companion in the back seat for the trip - apparently he is to clean the windscreen. He looks like the French cousin of NMC's Tigger

Upon arrival at Chazieux, I was kindly drawn a bath and Ginny, James' aunt (Claire's mother), was given permission to fuss over me as much as she felt fit. I think we were both happy for that - Ginny loves to care for people and having only James as a caretaker is wearying. Plus, Ginny is adorable and lovely, so she made me happier just by being around.

So that's the gist of it....in many, many long paragraphs. I spent nearly a week in a desperate state of illness and started joking the England was trying to kill me. What did I learn from being sick abroad? I know way more about UK television now. Also, when you're sick, everyone has an opinion on how you should handle said illness. And finally, I learned that James does a pretty good job at keeping me alive.

 

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