hotels, doctors, and thanksgiving

I’ve always enjoyed hotels and traveling. There is something exciting about leaving what is normal for a little while to see and experience something different. I think that’s partly why I decided to join the Peace Corps. I also find an incredible amount of pleasure is staying in a hotel where someone else will make my bed for me, deliver me fresh towels, and give me a complimentary breakfast. But this is only pleasant for me if I know I get to go home soon. As much as I like feeling like I get pampered from staying in hotels (even if the one’s in Asuncion look like they were built in the 1950’s), after a while of living out of my backpack, I am more than ready to get back to my own bed, my own space, and feel organized and normal again.
I am now at that point again, ready to be back home with my dog and sleep in my own bed. I just spent the last 5 nights in a hotel in Asuncion. Normally, I think that might have been a great break for me, but the problem was, I couldn’t even really leave my room because if I walked further than a city block, I started hacking out one of my lungs. I left my site last Tuesday to come into Asuncion for a 2 and a half days of meetings, and the timing perfectly worked out to my advantage in that I got sick the first day there. Wednesday the doctor was called and came out to our training site and I was informed that I had both a viral and a bacterial infection. Four medications and a few hours later, I started feeling better. Then came the real problems. Luckily, I have not had problems with my asthma since I have been in Paraguay, but as my sinuses began draining out the infection into my lungs, I started finding it difficult to breath. Thanksgiving morning I was driven to the Peace Corps office by one of my bosses to meet up with my doctor who gave me a steroid shot in my butt (that by the way hurts A LOT), 2 nebulizer treatments, and 4 more medications. I took a taxi to a hotel and spent the rest of my afternoon trying to find TV channels in English and trying not to think about all the great, all-American food my family was consuming back in California. Had I had a choice by the way, this would not be how I would want to spend my Thanksgiving.
Five days, one medication, and 2 more nebulizer treatments later, I am well enough to travel back home. I spent the majority of my days taking naps, watching more TV than I have in the last 9 months combined (and in English!), and read half of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Maybe it was a blessing in disguise to be so sick on Thanksgiving that I couldn’t truly concentrate and therefore couldn’t miss fully my favorite American holiday. I was too focused on getting enough oxygen into my lungs and trying not to worry about the fact that my arms and legs were tingly from all the chemicals that had been pumped into my bloodstream and airways. But either way, my first major American holiday that I have to spend in Paraguay has now passed and it has left me with an eagerness to return to my Paraguayan house and sleep in my own bed, and did I mention that I get to see my dog and that I miss her?
Oh, and to all of you dutiful taxpayers of the United States of America: not only are your hard-earned dollars paying my salary of approximately $250 a month, they also paid for a week of hotels and 9 medications for me. Thank you.