magical médico

I saw a doctor yesterday, and I’m proud. 

Not just of myself, for finally nutting up and going, but mostly of myself, for talking to him for I think five whole minutes before he buzzed for a nurse who spoke English. 

We even chatted while waiting for her. I learned that he has an eleven-year-old granddaughter in Fort Lauderdale who has become a local tennis sensation in spite of having contracted diphtheria during the reconstruction of the South. 

Maybe it was this feeling -that my Portuguese is getting really good- that led me to keep saying yes when asked if I understood things I didn’t really understand. 

A great snowball was born; as his confidence in me grew so did mine and vice versa. Soon he was joking and laughing in Portuguese and I was laughing along in what I’d bet my soul were all the right places. I threw lots of ‘ohh’-s and ‘aha’-s on top to make it pretty.

Then he sat and wrote - spanning two pages of a double-sized prescription pad - what looked like a college essay or the beginning of a novel. He talked a lot about how and when to take each of the six thousand medications he was prescribing, and I think at one point asked if I was allergic to something or other. (I said não; I’m probably not.) 

The English speaking nurse was long gone at this point. (She’d pretty much just walked in, said ‘what you have is viral. We can only treat it symptomatically.’ and then left. I wondered if she was some drunken trick pony hired only to do that.) 

Several people have hinted that the climate here gives gringoes the flu. Which makes sense. If I were a region in South America i would  give gringoes the flu too.

So I figured I’d just continue pretending to understand him, bring the handwritten tome to the pharmacy, pretend to understand the pharmacist, then at some point call one of my friends and make him translate.

Alas, I was too proud. 

Well, a mixy of being too proud, unable to read the doctor's handwriting, and too lazy to type and email what he'd written even if I could read it. (I guess this is kind of bullshit since at that point I had a typed printout from the pharmacist.) 

my sick legs

I figured I would watch Justified on Netflix and occasionally stare at the pile of medication. The answers would come.

And they did, in the form of our realtor dropping by to pick up some paperwork. All I wanted was for her to tell me which ones to take when, but she's German, so she also opened all the boxes and read the little booklets to make sure I wasn't allergic to anything. 

By the time she left I was too tired to start taking them, so I decided to watch more Justified and start anew the next day. And it's working! I feel better.