It's Never Lupus.

Well it's been an interesting bunch of days, to say the least. Things really kicked off on Thursday morning, when I went with Chabo (sp? Zsuzsi's step-father) to go check out a building he was renovating. He's a pretty cool guy- spoke English and talked to me about the architecture of the building. I'd gotten up at around 8:30 for this, but it was definitely a worthwhile experience, even if a lot of the conversations were in Hungarian.

I got home around lunch time, hoping to do some work that day as I hadn't

done any work in the studio in a number of days. However I was feeling really sleepy for whatever reason, and so I opted to take a nap before I went into studio. I woke up a few hours later with a slight headache. I figured I could go ask Zsuzsi for some pain pill or something, but I knew she was busy with a huge deadline the next day, so I figured I'd just try to ride it out in my room. I get migraine headaches a lot, so I didn't think too much of it. It started getting worse, which was normal for me, though it got to a point where I did ask Tibi if they had any medicine for me. Zsuzsi came in from studio (it was around 5 PM by this time) and gave me some pills/vitamins to try and get me better. Went to the doctor about an hour later, which I thought was completely unnecessary at the time, and the doctor said that something might be up with my appendix and that I'd have to go to the hospital.

So everything becomes frantic all of a sudden, and Zsuzsi and Tibi start to pack things for me while I'm groggily walking around with my massive headache. We went to St. John's hospital and sat around, waiting for the doctors to call me in. I hated this place though- As a hospital, it did a really bad job of making me feel safe. If anything, the place felt like a prison, or a mental asylum, or something. Heavy, sturdy walls with narrow hallways lit with florescent lighting, and small rooms for the doctors to perform their checkups and whatnot. Anyway...

I got called in, and the doctor, who fortunately spoke English, did the same tests on me as the previous doctor (poking my stomach), and diagnosed the same thing. I got taken over to what seemed like a more important doctor who didn't speak English, and he said the same thing. That guy seemed kind of grumpy though. I really didn't want to be stuck in the hospital with him. Afterwards we all got to talking about possibilities and price (mostly in Hungarian), and I eventually opted to hold off on the hospital for one night, deciding to spend the night at home instead. Zsuzsi was still frantic, and by that time, I think the pills were kicking in (granted, it was like 4 hours later... Advil is way better), and I was busy trying to look at the bright side of it all.

So I spent the night at home, though the pills wore off, and I got to shivering, with a fever and restlessness, but I managed to get some sleep. In the morning, we went to another doctor, one of Zsuzsi's friends. Surprise surprise, she diagnosed me with the same thing, and we were sent off to the hospital. Different one though. Apparently the way it works here is that every day, doctors send their patients to a different hospital, rotating each day. Weird. This one was infinitely better though. Can't remember the name off the top of my head (it was a Hungarian name, though it was renovated by Great Grandma...) But I got there, and with no pills in my body, and not having eaten since lunch the day before, I was feeling pretty weak and tired. I got another doctor who spoke English, and he told me the same thing... Went out to wait a bit more, and then another of the more important doctors came around as I was falling asleep in the chair, waking me up with a loud "yoel napolt" (sp?). So he took me in for yet another diagnosis with some other less important doctors around. This guy was a total dick though. I won't go into detail, but he just annoyed the hell out of me. He spoke English though, which was more than I could say for a lot of the doctors I'd met with... I'm pretty sure he was talking s*** about me to his doctor lackeys in Hungarian too... In the end though, he was the only doctor to say that it probably wasn't anything serious.

So I was checked into the hospital. They ran a blood test, urine test, x-ray, and an ultrasound, and nothing out of the ordinary turned up except for the fact that I was super dehydrated (I only drink water when I'm with Zsuzsi and Tibi. And a lot of it too). I got my room and was hooked up to some IVs which made me feel better after a while. I also had a roommate- an old guy who didn't speak any English. I really wanted to talk to him though- he seemed like a really interesting guy. Of course, he had operations on his spine, his shoulder, his stomach, was getting shots every few hours, had a tube in his hand and was urinating blood, and I'm lying in the bed next to him with a single needle in my arm. Great.

By the next day I was feeling much better. The IVs really helped, and the odds of me needing an

operation dropped to 10%. I have no idea where that percentage came from, but that's just what I was told. For breakfast, they served me a yogurt carton of... sour cream... and some cold meat. It was gross. However, I'd not eaten in about 40 hours, so I was pretty damn hungry and I finished it all. I was unhooked from the IVs by this point. Zsuzsi and Tibi would come in to visit periodically throughout the day and would bring me soup or snacks- much better than the hospital food I was getting.

Every meal though they give me one of these little yogurt cartons, and every single time I prayed that it was actually yogurt in these yogurt cartons (labels were in Hungarian...). They were never yogurt. They did start giving me bread though, which was good. I figured out to put the meat and sour cream in the bread and eat it as a sandwich- made it so much more tolerable. I also started reading The Scarlet Letter. Been a while since I read anything, but it was interesting. Definitely more difficult than my normal reads. Saw some fireworks that night.

By Sunday, I was feeling completely fine

aside from the sore throat I'd had, though my dickhead doctor wouldn't do anything about it no matter how many times I mentioned it. Zsuzsi and Tibi came to visit a few more times, and my meals were getting more complex with some better meat thrown into my soup. I was also walking around the hospital a bit too, which was good. Pretty boring day though- Not much to do in a hospital other than listening to my ipod.

I was released the next morning (thank god), and Zsuzsi came to pick me up, and I spent the rest of the day just resting and drinking lots of tea. Zsuzsi made chicken paprikash for dinner, which was awesome, and I went out and bought a cucumber. I learned both how to get to the grocery store and what a cucumber looks like. Communicating with Hungarian people by myself without knowing Hungarian is actually kind of tough...

So today Zsuzsi kicked me out of bed around 8:30 because she wanted to take me places... No work again apparently. We drove around for a while with me feeling pretty sleepy, while she checked up on a few things before we headed off to this museum thing. At one stop I found a pretty cool church, so I took some pictures. We also stopped at this dinky food place by a railroad station. I got a double cheeseburger. This thing turned out to be a monster- not what I was expecting from this tiny place. Easily the biggest cheeseburger I'd ever eaten. It was the first burger I literally couldn't fit into my mouth, even after compressing it as much as I could. It was a really good burger too. Props to the little old lady who ran the joint.

We got to the museum thing, which was basically a recreation of an bronze age Hungarian village,

with mud huts with sticks and straw and stones and what not. They were surprisingly interesting houses. We also checked out a recreation of a mound grave, which had a video inside of it which talked about the function and purpose of all the stuff inside of it. Basically it was the functional equivalent of a pyramid. It was pretty interesting. Left afterwards because it was raining. Drove home, drove under a new bridge, chicken paprikash for dinner, and I've been taking it easy and drinking a bunch of tea. Good stuff.