Once upon a time I went to Barcelona. You will all, surely remember that experience. Well, I brought back a little piece of Barcelona with me. I was a little itchy in Barcelona, but it wasn't til I got back to Paris that things turned bad.
On Sunday last I woke up with my eye feeling a little puffy. A few short years ago I had the same feeling of puffiness when I woke up. That time it morphed into me being unable to open my eye, running into my dresser so hard I still have a bruise today, begging for mercy from my boss to go to the doctor, and spending 7 hours in the George Washington University hospital ER only to be handed a bottle of eye drops and told I had Blepharitis, which, frankly, sounds like a made up disease. Anybody who knows me knows that if another person touches their eyes, my eyes start to water. I'm an eyephobe. If I ever have to get glasses I think I'll kill myself. For the next week I had a coworker drop eye drops into my poor little eyes. Usually one out of ten went in and it became a source of office entertainment.
So. You can imagine my panic when I woke up to this puffiness. Do NOT panic! I told myself, I'm sure it's just a little morning puffiness. Totalllly normal for one eye to have to exert a lot of energy to open and the other eye to feel fine. I crawled out of my bed and peered in the mirror, to find what I had feared. One puffy eye, one normal eye. I called the rents and my mother doctor promised to bring eye drops to the flea market we were going to.
So, running a little late amidst the eye panic, I boarded the metro instead of walking to meet them. Rookie mistake. One would think I would know by now that when I try to get on a train, chaos ensues. And so, of course, where I changed stations, the train I needed to get on was stopped, indefinitely, for an accident. So I decided to walk. Until I realized how actually far away it was. So then I decided to take the bus. For the first time ever. It was a treat! Friendly people, direction, no stopping, it has it's own lane and everything to drive in! The bus might be my new best friend! Who'd have thought?!
So, I made it to my parents, 45 minutes late. And my mother proceeded to drop eye drops into my eye while sitting at Starbucks and being looked at rather funnily by some Frenchies. But I figure, if you're French and at Starbucks, you have no right to judge.
As we were walking around the rather unexciting flea market, I decided to show my mother my increasing number of red bumps.
"I think it's scabies," I said. Certain that the disease my sister and I may or may not have contracted in Ecuador was back to rear it's ugly face. Not that I'm making a generalization here, but weird red bumps tend to appear on me in Spanish speaking countries.
"Bug bites," she determined with the same certainty she brushed away the idea of lice as I pulled bugs out of my hair eight years ago. In all fairness to the woman, in addition to being terrified of eyes, I've got a touch of hypochondria and could just as easily have determined the bumps to be a sign of an inevitable diagnosis of skin cancer as scabies.
Later in the day, however, Mama Karen sharpened her diagnosis and determined that, in fact, I did seem to be exhibiting signs of scabies. Such as, having mysterious itchy red bumps in clusters all over my limbs and back. And so she got to play her own fun game of try to communicate with the French at the pharmacy. And my was she successful! She got me some scabies cream, some itchy go away stuff, and a bottle of wine!
So I took the longest shower I have ever taken in my life. Became the cleanest I have possibly ever been. Doused myself in scabies goop. And shoved all my clothes away except for two little previously unworn outfits (scabies can live on clothes for three days! little buggers! no pun intended). I spent the day frolicking with my parents. In my stinky and diseased state they would still hang out with me, which I thought was nice of them. We had lots of fun diagnosing me, wandering Paris, eating falafel, and such.
On Wednesday my parents sadly left me all alone in Paris and I hopped a train to the south of France to see my friend Emily who is living in a town called Avignon teaching English. It was super fun and relaxing and we spent a lot of time laying by a river tanning and life planning! I think I might have even come up with one! Stay tuned for details!
And now I'm back in Paris apparently scabies and weird eye disease free. Here in Paris we have no screens on our windows and spring has finally reached us. I had hopes that maybe bugs didn't fly up as high as the 6th floor but they were proven false hopes when I woke up at 3 o clock this morning to a buzzing in my ear. This morning I had 5 mosquito bites! In a moment of fear I thought they might be Scabies, round 2, but they are decidedly different.
Oooh I have so much more to blog about my spring break! But I am sleepy and have an early wake up to go get my friend Justine from the airport who will have made it to Paris two days after her departure from Boston! Poor weary traveler.
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1 comment:
yo, scabies-free avignon, too. hope all is well with roomie, the mcdo's down the street, and ms. justine. let's go get some oberon.
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