Sick

I haven't been feeling well for the past few days - too much partying I guess. I took 1/2 a day off from work last Wednesday (after we got back from Wisla) - slept for about 16 hours, waking up every 4 hours to drink 2 500mg Paracetamol tablets at a time. That helped - a bit.

The problem is with my tonsils (which translates literally to "little tongue" in Polish). Once or twice a year they get infected, and when things don't go so well, I will start getting a 40-41 deg C fever coupled with a nasty visit to the emergency room. When I went to the doctor with this problem in Manila early last year, he said that the next time I get a tonsil infection, he will have to cut it off.

That course of action didn't sound so pleasant, so the next time it happened (sometime late last year), I avoided the doctor like the plague.

Falling ill in a foreign land is not easy - the tricky part really is finding an English speaking doctor. If I don't find one, I would have to learn how to say "don't you dare cut off my little tongue!" in Polish. It's risky, since if you mispronounce something, the meaning totally changes, and who knows what they'll do.

Mispronouncing foreign words can get you in a lot of trouble. An Italian colleague here once tried to say "Who is that pretty girl?" in Polish. It turns out that the Polish word for "pretty" is very similar to the Polish word that means "easy." Guess which word he pronounced, and how much trouble that got him into, hehehe.

If I don't find an English speaking MD, I guess I will just have to cross my fingers and say again and again in English: "No cut, no cut!!!!"

Luckily, I did find an English speaking doctor. She was very good - in fact, she prescribed 7 different kinds of medicine:


The last medicine she prescribed was "Orofar," which is a lozenge - something like an industrial strength version of Strepsils. Anyway, when she was trying to ask me if I was already taking a lozenge, she didn't know how to say it in English. She grabbed her dictionary, looked for the right term, and exclaimed: "do you have anything to suck?" Hahahaha....even if I understood what she meant perfectly, I still couldn't help but laugh out loud.

She then prescribed a pretty strong antibiotic - so I had to ask her the question: "Can I take alcohol?" She said "yes, but not too much." Then she asked me if I smoked. I said "yes, I do." She said "you should stop." I said "I know!"

She laughed. I guess it was her revenge.

As expected, her handwriting was terrible:


I guess doctors all over the world have nasty penmanship. She's very good though, I feel a lot better already.

As a final note, the most surprising thing about this ordeal is how expensive medicines are back at home. I bought the exact same antibiotics in Manila a year ago, and they cost more than twice as much. I guess 50% of the price we pay for medicines go to our doctor's "commissions," in the form of "free" trips abroad, medical "seminars" in fancy hotels and restaurants, and other nasty "perks." Of course, its not easy - they have to meet their respective "quotas," otherwise they get nothing. Its sick (no pun intended) I know - I personally think we should hate them more than lawyers or politicians.

To avoid a similar predicament, always remember to drink your vitamins, go to bed early, and don't get sick!