I went to Florence a little bit under the weather; I was stuffed up and generally run down. It only got worse as I went out every night during our "welcome week", but I figured it'd go away and was just a cold. Little did I know this cold was the least of my problems.
Stomach Flu Saga One:
The first day of classes went great, but the second day is a whole different story. My morning started off touring the San Lorenzo Central Market with my cooking class. Our teacher was showing us every different kind of meat (i.e. pig's heads and squid) and I was so unbelievably nauseous. I figured my queazy stomach was from the dead animals and didn't think much else of it. Flash forward two and a half hours and I have my next class. I am 99% sure I blacked out during this class because I don't remember a single thing. I was so focused on not projectile vomiting onto my desk that I didn't hear a single word our teacher said. When it was finally 2:30 I got the hell out of there and power-walked it back to my apartment. I then proceeded to throw up for the next four hours.
When I couldn't even keep Powerade and saltines down, my mom told me to go to the doctor. Jessica, being the amazing friend that she is, came with me to the Italian doctor because I was petrified. After an appointment that consisted of awkward miscommunications (shoutout to the language barrier), he told me that I had a stomach virus. He prescribed me a bunch of medicines that I picked up on my way back to my apartment. I hadn't had a fever all day, but about an hour after I got back home and had the chills yet my skin was on fire I decided to retake it. It was 101... aka I had the flu and not a virus.
Let's keep in mind that I was supposed to leave for Switzerland the next night so I was a mess and a half considering I felt horrible and didn't want to miss out on a fun weekend. After a lot of back and forth debating whether or not I should go, I decided to stay home for the weekend. In retrospect this was a very smart decision considering I would have been miserable on an eight hour bus drive, could not have gone out at night with my friends and wouldn't be able to eat any of the yummy food. I took it easy over the weekend and besides my cold (which pretty much everyone had) I thought I was all better. Oh how I was wrong.
Stomach Flu Saga Two:
Considering that I felt good and had none of my previous symptoms, I had no reason to think that I wasn't completely cured of my 24-hour flu. I went to Prague the next weekend with all of my friends and had an amazing time. Never once did I feel out of it or any kind of sick. We got back from Prague and the week went on just like any other week. Go to class, eat, hang out and then go out.
Tuesday morning I woke up and my stomach felt funny. It wasn't nausea or pains, it just felt really off and uncomfortable. I figured I was just hungover because I had gone out the night before and not gotten a lot of sleep so I ignored it. The feeling persisted throughout the day, but I didn't feel "sick", my stomach just felt funny. Fast forward (again) to Tuesday night after dinner. My stomach now felt nauseous and I just had a feeling I was going to throw up again. I was correct. From about 10:30 pm to 7am the next morning I was on my bathroom floor throwing up and crying and being miserable while FaceTiming my mom from Justin's birthday dinner.
I made an appointment with an English speaking doctor the next morning. He told me it was either the flu or appendicitis. Yes, you read that correctly. Appendicitis. He had pressed all around my stomach and when he pressed on the area that the appendix is in, I was in horrible pain. He told me to go to the ER to get blood work and a scan done to make sure that it wasn't that. Of course this scared the shit out of me and I left crying. My mom called our program heads to tell them what was going on and they said they wanted to take me to a private clinic to get the blood work and scan done because the ER would take hours. So I went to their office with Jessica and Ashley and Luca (one of the program heads) took us to the clinic. Thank god he was there because it was so confusing and no one spoke English. Aka I would have been screwed had I been there alone. I'm still not sure what he and the receptionist lady talked about, but 10 minutes later we were on our way to the ER.
We got to Ospedale Santa Maria Nuova at about 4:30 pm. I was discharged at 12:30 am. This experience pretty much scarred me from ever getting sick, especially in Italy again. After an hour of waiting they finally did blood work. Then I waited another hour and a half to be seen by the doctor. The doctor spent about 5 minutes with me before putting me in the sketchiest wheel chair I'd ever seen, hooking up "therapy" to my IV and leaving me in the hallway. I sat in the hallway for an hour not knowing what the hell was going on. Apparently they don't feel the need to tell patients what is going on with their medical situation. I finally got wheeled into radiology were they did a sonogram of my appendix.
Then I was wheeled back to the same spot in the same hallway where I was completely ignored for an hour and a half. When I was supposed to get testing done at the clinic, I had been told to drink half a liter of water an hour before the scan (which would have been about 4). All this water, plus the liquids from my IV, were making me have to pee so badly, but of course I couldn't get anyones attention and when I finally did she didn't speak a single world of English. Meanwhile, I'm being hit on by an 18 year old Italian boy who spoke sub-par English and was having his mom translate. He waved at me, but I wasn't sure if he was actually waving at me because why the heck would he be? But then he kept waving so I smiled awkwardly. Then he started talking... and talking... and talking.
"What is your name?"
"Carly. What's yours?"
"________ (sidenote: I don't remember his name). Why are you here?"
"My stomach."
"Me too. Where are you from?"
"Chicago."
"Are you on vacation?"
"No I'm studying abroad for the semester."
"What are you studying?"
"History."
"History is beautiful."
"Yeah, it's great."
"You're beautiful."
"Oh.. um... okay, thanks."
"How old are you?"
"20."
"I'm 18."
*awkwardly smile because I'm so thrown off by this conversation*
"Do you have a boyfriend?"
"What? Uh no."
"So you are single?"
"Yeah...."
"Can I kiss you?"
"Absolutely not."
"Can you kiss me?"
"Gonna have to go with a no."
"Why?"
I'm not kidding this actually happened. I'm pretty sure he was suffering from head trauma rather than a stomach issue, but I guess I'll never know. Finally, the doctor called me back into his office around 11:30. Midway through him giving me my diagnosis, a nurse wheels in a stretcher with someone whose head is bleeding. Okay, I get that obviously that's more important than my issue and needs immediate attention, but could they have at least asked me to leave the room before they just wheeled on in a bleeding skull? The doctor then proceeded to kick me out of the room while saying something about paperwork. So back into the hallway for another 30 minutes it was until a nurse finally came out and gave me paperwork to be discharged. And guess what... turns out it was just the stomach flu again. I had to miss my trip to Amsterdam, but it was for the best considering I slept the whole entire weekend. I'm still only eating plain foods like pasta, rice and bananas, but I'm hoping to be 100% better asap.
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