Vertigo

I’ve been out of commission for a few days. My problems started Wednesday night when I awoke around 2 a.m. with my head spinning out of control. I couldn’t even walk to the bathroom so I crawled there, where I proceeded to be sick at frequent and regular intervals for the rest of the night. Thursday, Mom made me an appointment with the doctor, so I managed to get up from the sleeping bag she’d laid out for me beside the toilet, get dressed and get into the car (throwing up a few more times in the process).
The doctor diagnosed me with “benign positional vertigo” and gave me an anti-nausea shot, a lot of pills to buy and some special “exercises” to do which involve placing my head in various dizzying positions in groups of 12-15 repetitions.

I’m feeling better than I did that first day – my eyes aren’t spinning around in my head at quite the same speed. I can say that if trying to write a Master’s thesis in French on the literary portrait of Themistocles is tedious on the best of days, it’s somewhat more daunting when the computer screen is swirling around French and Ancient Greek in an incoherent blend of letters and accents. So I don’t know if the end result will be comprehensible or not, but I just want to get this thing printed and in the mail to France as soon as possible. The amount of time I’ve spent being sick this summer (first with a cold caught on the plane, then with the adeno virus caught from my aunt, and now with this vertigo, evidently a result of the virus), along with the amount of time I’ve spent stressing about this thesis, has prevented me from fully enjoying being with my family. In a way I’m glad to have gotten sick here instead of in Montpellier, because my mother has been taking such wonderful care of me ; but I see my family so seldom now that I live in France, and I’d have liked to get in a little more “quality time” with them this summer.

And I know I’ve made this out to be primarily a food blog, but for the past few days I’ve been ingesting nothing but prescription drugs, dry Rice Chex, saltine crackers, plain basmati and fruit juice popsicles. Nothing too worthy of note.