Hold Out Your Arm So We Can Take Your Temperature

I didn't post at all last week because I was sick. Not the I've-got-a-cold type of sick, and not the Thai-food-isn't-being-kind-to-my-digestive-system type of sick, but actually sick. I didn't think I was at first. At home, I didn't get sick very often--one year in college, all of my five roommates came down with the flu twice each, and all I got was a stuffy nose for a couple of days. Also, last week it was harder to tell I had a fever, because instead of realizing I had chills, I just thought the temperature wasn't quite so stiflingly hot as it had been the week before.

I had grand plans for the three-day weekend of Thailand's Constitution day (Monday, Dec. 10th this year), but they all fell through when I woke up on Saturday and realized that I had a sore throat and didn't feel like going anywhere. I made it to the market to pick up some groceries, but felt totally wiped afterward. I told myself I'd get a good night's sleep and get traveling on Sunday. Sunday morning came, and it was all I could do to muster enough energy to make it to the bathroom, which meant my plans for Kanchanaburi and Erawan Falls were out. So I resigned myself to recuperating over the holiday so that I could feel well enough to go back to school on Tuesday. Tuesday morning came, and I went to the doctor instead.

The school coordinator, Pheung, took me to a clinic at the market, telling me that the doctor there was the best in Doembang and that his clinic was the cleanest, that he worked at the hospital for most of the day, but he had a clinic open for two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening. The waiting room was open-air, as quite a few things are in Thailand. There was a long wait. I probably wasn't much fun to wait with--I tend to go quiet and almost surly when I'm not feeling well. Also, going to see the doctor in a foreign country is a bit scary. Medical terms are a language all their own, and I was sure something important was going to get lost in translation. There was a funny moment where I had to explain the difference between "temperature" and "blood pressure," but otherwise translations went better than I expected.

It took perhaps a minute's examination before the doctor told me I had a bacterial infection in my throat. I might have been skeptical at such a hasty diagnosis, but I remembered being about thirteen or fourteen years old and listening to my family doctor telling my mom about how Strep has a distinctive smell--and I'd been waking up with an odd taste in my mouth for a few days last week, and taste and smell are closely related, so . . . I came to the conclusion that I must have something akin to strep. Which gave me enough confidence in the doctor's prognosis to take the medications he gave me. And his prognosis was dead on--most of the symptoms disappeared by Thursday, and I was back at my full energy level by Friday. Hurrah for a return to health!

Unexpected health advice for sore throats: I was told by multiple people to not drink anything colder than room temperature while my throat was sore. Odd advice, but it worked, too.