tos saga continued...

The day after I was in Paris, I went to Nantes to see Janet. Despite my hacking cough we had a nice picnic next to the Nantes chateau, walked through the history of Nantes museum and hung out with Aurelian and his girlfriend in some sort of fair trade bar where Aurelian´s friend´s band played that night. Thank god for no smoking in French public places.

The next morning I woke up with a fairly sharp pain in the left side of my mid-back that hurt all the time, but especially when I coughed/laughed/breathed deeply. On the tram into Nantes I had a particularly strong coughing fit and felt a burst of pain in the same area, as if I´d fractured a rib or torn a muscle. Things went downhill quickly after that, as I kept having urges to cough but it was extremely painful to do so. I started crying, and concerned people on the tram began asking if I was alright.


I was pretty freaked out, not knowing if I had pnemonia, if my Spanish insurance would cover me in France, if I should go to the hospital/doctor there or try to hop on the first available train back to Spain. I also kept thinking about an article my older sister had sent me only a couple weeks earlier about a friend of hers who had died of the flu. The article described how one of her lungs had already filled with fluid by the time she reached the hospital, and at the time I could feel and hear (Janet could hear it also) a lot of crap floating around in my lungs.

I got a hold of Isa, who told me that I could go to the doctor there, keep the receipts, and my Spanish insurance would reimburse me. So Janet and I went to the ER in Nantes. It was quite disorganized, we waited for about 20 minutes on some chairs in a room/hallway area that also held three very elderly patients who seemingly did not have rooms (ironic given that there was a line on the floor in front of the reception desk that you weren´t supposed to cross for reasons of confidentiality). The woman waiting in front of us had been there 45 minutes and told Janet that there was only one nurse working that day because it was a Saturday. Janet, my translator and savior for the day, made a lot of expensive phone calls while we waited and ended up getting me an appointment with an on-call doctor in Carquefou, the suburb of Nantes where she lives and teaches. The on-call doctor diagnosed me with some type of lung infection (maybe bronchitis....there were some things lost in translation) and prescribed four different medications.

That was April 5th. This week, after 6 doctors visits to 3 different doctors in 2 different countries, I´m feeling health again. (The cough is still around, but not nearly as strong...it´s possible I might be allergic to something here). Por fin!