Malade comme un chien

exp. – sick as a dog.

To follow up on my previous post, I was premature in celebrating my recuperation. In fact, it took several more days and a full series of antibiotics to do the trick. It’s no wonder that everyone in the apartment got so sick given how hot it is. Well actually I was the only one who got sick, but no wonder!

At first I thought the raspy, throaty voice from endless hacking was sexy. That is until I feared I might have done irreparable damage to my vocal chords losing the ability to ever speak properly again. It was during this time that I realized the expression “sick as a dog” is a bit of misnomer. “Sick as a New Yorker in December” maybe, but my dog is never sick.

One of my favorite sayings is “a faithful friend is the medicine of life.” It’s true that friends always have a way of making us feel better. As holiday cards start to stream in, I realize how lucky I am to have so many friends because I also believe that while friends we have many, good friends we have but a few. Most of us who have entered the social networking game can count upwards of a hundred friends easily – some have even upwards of a thousand, but how many of these friends are really that close to us?

Networking in general has been around since the Dawn of time. Technology has just made it easier. Making new friends, however, is just as complex as it’s always been. Recently, a woman in our building was widowed. She had been very gracious with us regarding a question we had about work she had done on her apartment that we were thinking about doing on ours. So I foolishly felt a tiny connection for that reason. When her husband passed away after a long illness, I reached out with a note of condolence offering my company should she want to get together for coffee, tea, a chat.

She never responded and now when I see her in the building, I feel awkward like she wishes I would go away. At first I felt like an idiot for reaching out to a total stranger who clearly already had a lifetime of friends, not to mention family, to see her through her grieving. It wasn’t until a good friend of mine pointed out though that what I had done came from the right place and that I shouldn’t feel bad about trying to do a nice thing. That’s what friends are for, making us feel better no matter what the circumstance.

Dogs also have an ability to make us feel better because they never judge. They also can intuit when we’re under the weather or just under a cloud. “Man’s best friend” indeed and what more faithful friend than a dog. So here’s to dogs and friends, not necessarily in that order – may the holiday season be as kind to all of you as you all continue to be to each other.

Mieux vaut prévenir que guérir

exp. – better to prevent than to fight or an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

While I feel like I’ve touched on this phrase before, this week I truly learned this lesson the hard way. I wasn’t feeling well, which made me realize I hadn’t gotten my flu shot yet so I rushed to the pharmacy to do just that. This was my first mistake. I told the pharmacist I didn’t feel well to which she replied, well it takes two weeks to take effect so you may still get the flu. Jokingly I said, well at least I won’t get it again after that. Turns out this wasn’t funny.

I don’t think of myself as a hypochondriac, but fortunately I’m not often sick. So when I am, I can go from ill to dying within hours. The following day I was in urgent care sweating and almost crying explaining all my symptoms to a rather unsympathetic doctor relatively disgusted with me for getting the flu shot when I already wasn’t feeling well. You see I reversed the natural order – not feeling well, flu shot, doctor, vs. doctor, flu shot to prevent not feeling well. He seemed more interested in whether I was pregnant or going through menopause – too old for the former, too young (I hope) for the latter, but he did ascertain that I was dehydrated (probably from the loss of fluids due to the fever) and had some sort of “unspecified viral infection.” He told me to let him know if things got worse.

Well the next day they did. I thought my head was going to explode. I had a cough, dry throat, clearly a fever. I was weak, dizzy, nauseous, in other words an utter and complete mess. So I made a second trip to urgent care. This time it was another doctor, much more sympathetic as far as I’m concerned because I give him credit for single handedly saving my life. It was so simple, ibuprofren to bring the fever down, a prescription cough suppressant and a prescription flu medication. I went from a fever of 103 to 98.7 within hours, slept without sweating and awoke feeling almost cured.

Of course all of this came at a price and it was a rude reminder that I’m not in France anymore. My total for my subscription medications was almost $100 – that was for all two of them! And the pharmacist gleefully pointed out that I had actually saved $70 on one of them because of my insurance. While I just had what I’m guessing was some version of the flu, I can’t imagine suffering through it without relief and to think of the far graver maladies people have to suffer through because they can’t afford health insurance is eye opening to say the least.

So to end with another French expression that mirrors the English one, ne remettez pas à demain ce que vous pouvez faire aujourd'hui – don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today. I should have gotten my flu shot months ago before flu season hit. But mistakes are to learn from and to blog about.