an uneventful week....until.....

The rest of the illness week was much too boring and scholarly and ill to speak of. I coughed and sneezed and felt feverish and itchy throated as i wrote papers and took midterms. These all went relatively well, considered the absolute lack of studying and general preparation.

Thursday, my civ o london class went to St. Paul's cathedral, which i was quite excited about since i had never actually been inside it. I must say, it is quite impressive. That Christopher Wren guy is a pretty awesome guy. He was very into Baroque architecture (which is how i got my class to count as my art history major Baroque core despite the fact that we cover about 1000 years of time). It is quite large, and almost overly decorated on all sides and areas; including the parts that he did not do. Apparently some queen at some point decided that this wasn't fancy enough for her, so on the parts that were formerly just nice stone, she slapped up some shiny golden mosaics. Some people do not like them, but i think they look quite nice in the one area. Had they continued on to do the rest of the nave, i would probably disapprove, but the one area is lovely.

I decided it would be a good idea to walk up the 164 stairs to the Whispering Gallery, and then continue on another 300plus steps to the top of the outer dome. Probably not the best idea since i still had a fever...but it was quite worth it. I did not quite understand the whispering aspect of the whispering gallery, since i could not hear others whispering on the opposite side. Perhaps they weren't whispering correctly. The view from the top was amazing, and i took many photos. I managed to make it down the stairs without dying and then went back to school.

We had planned our fall break trip Wednesday night: A 7-day "backpacking" tour of Great Britain run by a tour group known as Haggis. mmmmm haggis. Nothing like a bunch of organs cooked in a sheep's stomach! As you may have guessed, i did not try haggis during my stay in Scotland. I will write about this trip later on. Until then, i am going to continue catching up....

Friday, I finally went to the doctor after much communication with the parents and the insurance people. It was worth it though because i got an appointment for the next day, whereas people who try to get an appointment through the school's health system do not get them for weeks. I went there and explained the situation to the doctor who surmised, oh you probably had a very high fever i suppose? I said i suppose? I then went on to say that i still can't talk right and have all these other symptoms but i haven't had a fever for the past few days. Then he took out the thermometer and said " Right, well you've got a fever." " Do i?...Huh." " Do you feel like you have a fever?" "Uh....not really? no. i don't , its been significantly better than what it was the rest of the week." Now apparently most doctors here like to avoid giving prescriptions, which i think is a novel idea. The world should be less drugged up, people need to learn to deal with the little things. This doctor, however, gave me drugs with no trouble. I guess there's no arguing with a fever. I had laryngitis, obviously an infection, so he gave me amoxycilin and told me to rest.

Rest,eh? Hmmm....well sir, i have a tour to go on in two days...do you think i will be ok by then? He looked at me skeptically and said "...well ...you'll be on the mend by then, so as long as you just sleep and rest over the weekend, you should be ok. Just finish the medicine and call if you still don't feel well." He seemed to not approve of my trip. But i paid for it, and i was going to go.

Luckily, the drugs were working by the next day and i started to feel a little better and regain my voice. Maybe it was the amoxycilin three times a day, or maybe it was the 400mg of ibuprofen three times a day to stop the fever...but whatever it was, i was feeling pretty good by Saturday evening. I had rested by reading and watching movies all day, and i had signed up earlier that day to watch the old original Italian Job with Michael Caine down on the big screen tv. (I had tried to rent it earlier, but it is a different region for the uk so it won't work in my computer ). Unfortunately, when i went downstairs for dinner at 5, i had forgotten that is was saturday and the refectory closed at 4.

So i sighed , went upstairs, put on a very heady coat and boots, and walked to the nearest Tesco's to get some food. Probably not a good thing to do when one is ill. I came back and heated up my little microwave dinner so i could bring it downstairs to watch the movie.

As i've said...i'd been feeling much better all day saturday. And my brain thought: "No! No! We can't have this! She is feeling much too well for this trip I apparently don't want her to go on! I must remedy this situation by...
making her fall down the stairs ..NOW!"

and so i did. As i carried my food in my right hand, and another bag of food in my left, my feverish self did not pay enough attention to the stairs. I thought i was at the landing, so i stepped and started to turn my foot. I was not at the landing. I had two more stairs to go until the landing. So my right foot hit the edge of the stair somehow and then landed somewhat sideways on the floor with all my weight coming down on it. I went down and made a thud. However, throughout all this, i did not drop my tray. I did not lose one drop of sauce. Nothing. I don't know how this was done, or why, but i manuevered that food like a champ. Obviously we know where my priorities lie...i am 99 percent sure that if i just immediately dropped the food and grabbed onto the railing i would have probably been ok. I could not think quick enough, so i found myself in a very awkward and uncomfortable position on the stairs holding a plate of hot food and in a very great deal of pain.

I can usually deal well with pain and generally ignore injury, so when i thought immediately upon landing "I hope i did not break my ankle", that's a bad sign. It did make a nice popping noise. So i limped down the last flight of stairs and to the main desk to inquire about obtaining some ice. I was told they did not have ice since the refectory was closed. I then looked at my ankle, which has swelled to the size of a softball, no exaggeration, and said " huh. perhaps i should go to the doctor then." I like to go all out when i do things: already sick with laryngitis, huge trip in one day, no ice for the refectory is closed, no friends because they were all on fall break trips or day trips along with pretty much everyone in the school. They don't like you to go to the walk-in clinic alone, so an RA came with me. I felt bad

So i sat there and ate my unscathed food, while waiting for the cab to take me to the walk-in clinic at 7pm. Walk-in. How ironic.