Sick

The four-days fall break is over. I didn't feel like I had a fall break because I started to get sick at the night before the first day of holiday. I had severe headache, muscle ache through my whole body, and also fever. The pain stopped for a while occasionally, but most of the time I was suffering from the pain. I slept for almost two full days and then I felt a bit better on Saturday morning. However, in the afternoon I started to feel the pain again and my boyfriend drove me to the hospital.

I gave the nurse in the registration a hard time. As I was below 18 and I didn't have a parent or guardian in the USA, the registration procedure was slightly complicated. The nurse had to make calls to ask the administrative staff how to deal with my case. Later, they understood that I am an international student, so they just left the blank "Patient Parent/Guardian Signature" empty. They first checked my pulse, temperature etc. The reading of my pulse was 135 and the nurse was shocked. He checked it again and it was 137. I actually didn't realise that a 135 pulse was very high until I saw the light flashing on the screen of the machine. I was then sent to see a nurse practitioner. As they were worried that I had a flu, they drew my blood and some other my excretions to send to the lab. Thank god that the blood test was very successful this time. As Americans worked very slowly, it took more than 1 hour for the lab results to come out.

I called home while waiting. When I heard my mom's voice, I started crying like a little kid because I missed home a lot at that moment. My mom thought that I was scared but I explained that I just missed her a lot when I was sick. Mom replied, "Of course you miss home. You have been away from home for 2 months already. And you used to eat my food when you were sick. Now I'm not beside you to cook for you." I got homesick when I was sick...

At last, the lab result came out. The doctor said that I didn't have a flu, only viral infection. He then asked me if I have had any blood problems before as the blood test showed that both the white blood cells and blood platelets in my blood were low. It was unusual and he guessed that it was probably because of the virus.
As there were no medicines for viral infection, I could only take Tylenol and Advil for aches and temperature. I was asked to take quite a lot of pills - 2 tablets of Tylenol every 6 hours and 3 tablets of Advil every 6 hours. Since it's not very good to take 2 kinds of medicines at the same time, I took Tylenol and Advil alternately. That means first Tylenol, Advil 3 hours later, then Tylenol 3 hours later, so on so forth. As I had to maintain a regular intake of medicines, I had to wake up at the midnight to take the pills. I didn't get a very good sleep since I had to wake up every 3 hours.

I need to re-take blood test on Monday and no school on Monday and Tuesday.