Being Sick in a Foreign Country

Being sick in a different country is not an experience everyone should deal with when they travel! I would say for the majority of August I was sick with something. I'll start with the beginning....

When we first got here I wasn't sick and my body seemed to be taking in the changes pretty well until I got a horrible sore throat! I was a little scared because I had strep earlier in the summer! But I new it was because I was getting use to the atmosphere, smog, and cigarette smoke. Everyone and I literally mean everyone smokes down here. It's not like Colorado where it's illegal to smoke indoors. People smoke in the clubs while they're dancing! It's ridiculous and a horrible problem. My body is use to really clean air coming from Colorado and especially Crested Butte where hardly anyone smokes cigarettes! Anyway my sore throat went away after about a week, which made me really happy. I went on fine for about a week.

Being in a new country there are tons of new foods to try that are typical for Chileans. So one weekend we tried tons of new things such as sopapillas (our mom taught us how to make them from scratch!) with all sorts of toppings for Friday night onces, Saturday we tried all sorts of new seafoods (interesting because I've always loved shrimp, but this was all sorts of different clams to try), Sunday night we had left-over pizza that had sat in the box overnight and all day. Needless to say Jeannie and I got really sick sunday night throwing up. I still think to this day that I got food poisoning from the pizza! I will never eat pizza after it's sat out all night and day! So I was sick pretty much all week with my stomach not feeling 100%. Thursday of that week I had the worst stomach cramps because there was so much gas bottled up inside of me. One second I would be fine and the next second doubled over in so much pain! I basically crawled to one of the many pharmacies here and got something for my stomach! It helped a ton and my body is back on schedule... literally!

Now it's been over a month here and I was fine for a few weeks until I went out one night for a friends birthday and the next morning I woke up with a horrible cough that I've never had before! I figured it was only because I was in a smoky place the night before and my lungs just needed fresh air. However I was also having a sinus headache that day too... I had a feeling it wasn't right. Well about a week passed and the sinus headache had gone away, but my cough didn't. This cough sounds horrible like I'm about to cough up a lung or something. My mom here is pretty good at taking care of me especially when Jeannie and I were really sick with our stomachs. She gave me cough medicine that helped but only worked for just a little while. After a week my mom said I needed to go to the doctor, so she took me to the clinic at the hospital. After waiting for over an hour I finally got to the doctor. The consultation lasted about 15 minutes and consisted of me trying to convey what was going on with my body. My mom did most of the talking but the doctor was like "If.. you... talk.. really.. slowly.. I... will... be .. able.. to.. understand.. your.. English." I said it was fine and a lot easier to talk in Spanish after I saw how long it took to get out that sentence. After everything was said and done... I didn't have Bronchitis which was what I thought I might have. I had searched it on WebMD before going to the doctor and had all the symptoms except the fever. In the end I have something with my bronchioles and my trachea but my lungs are fine... so he says. I have antibiotics and cough syrup. But I still think something is wrong with my lungs because I'm wheezing. That might because I have junk caught on my bronchioles. Who knows really. I just hope that within these next couple of weeks I'm free of sickness!

I have an exciting adventure ahead of me because Celine Cooper, my best friend who is also studying down here, and I have our other best friend Bailey flying in on Friday! Starting the 14th through the 18th I don't have any school because it's "spring break" or really just a huge party for Chile's independence! So we're taking advantage of the week off and traveling north! So stay tuned for our huge adventure to the north of Chile! Hope everyone is doing great and this finds you in good health! Take care! Besitos y abrazos! Hugs and Kisses to everyone! Chao!