YAY Change!

Yay!!!!!! Gobama!!!!! Just announced, Obama won! Yay!!! This is almost as exciting as Germany wining a soccer match! Feel like going out to celebrate. Woooohoooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!! 😀

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Sick Puppy

So ever since my friend Jens left 5 weeks ago I’ve had a throat ache on and off and have just been feeling a little blah. I felt fine one week and then blah the next. Rather annoying but I thought it was the weather change and all the stress going on with work and all these visitors (who I truly enjoyed but it was a lot going on). I kept taking my good old German medicine and the throat aches left me again. Well, last week on Monday after a tremendous amount of fun at the Nascar race (touch football, moonshine, redneckin’, BBQing, sitting on a state trooper’s bike) and more weekend fun with Rich and Scott here, I woke up with pretty bad throatache again. OK nothing new. Annoying but whatever. Well Wednesday I was fed up with it as I could feel that it was my tonsil that was swollen and hurting me. Went to the urgent care center (I love those, doctors offices that are open before and after work and where you don’t need an appointment) expecting to get a prescription for antibiotics and good.
After some confusion from the nurses (uhm you already asked me all those questions) they took my temperature, which was up, and a strep test. You know, the one where they poke long cotton swabs in your throat. Gag! Well that was negative. So the super nice doctor lady comes in with this box full of vials and needles and she’s like: we’re gonna take your blood. Yikes!!! Didn’t expect that!!
Long story short, I got out there and grabbed my “wonder mouth wash” (lidocaine, anti allergy, and anti something else mix that completely numbs your mouth) and some antibiotics. Cool stuff, you only had to take 3 pills and that was that. My tonsil got better instantly. I had some stomach cramps after the first pill but was fine thereafter. Yay!
Then the doc called sometime later to tell me the back-up test for strep was negative. Cool. Today they called me with the back-up results for the blood test (quick response test had been negative, too) and as I had already suspected, it’s Epstein-Barr virus that has been bugging me and making me feel iffy all these weeks. Sounds scary but it’s really not, just very annoying. Does mono or Pfeiffersches Druesenfieber ring a bell? Makes you feel fatigued, have fever and sore throat. Some people get so sleepy they can’t get anything done but most people don’t even have any symptoms. And I’m not some outcast or whore for having it ;-), 50% of children have it and 95% of people under 40. Kinda like chickenpox, once you’ve had it you’re done with it. And no, kissing isn’t the only way you can get it, it’s airborne, too, or you know sharing a drink etc can do the trick. Yeah yeah. Oh and great fun, it can last weeks!!
Annoying. I wanna go back to the gym and I wanna feel super healthy again (though I feel really good today, hopefully it’s pretty much over by now) but I guess I’ll continue taking it easy, eat lots of fruits and go to bed early. Sigh. But yeah no worries, it just sounds scary. And hey, odds are you’ve already had it ;-).

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Lucky Me

Shamrock

Hello hello!
I’ve been feeling quite lucky these days and thought I’d blog a bit. Well, my throat is hurting quite a bit again (on and off for the past 3 weeks really but now it’s back full force after a fun filled weekend). But other than that…

Lucky #1: So my friends here make fun of me here because every time a firetruck drives by I wave and get all excited and drool over the firefighters. The other day I get a facebook message from a firefighter (normally I ignore those “stalking” messages but come on, from a fireman!) so we chatted a bit and we went on a date. Firefighter date! Free sushi! Great times! Invitation to attend firefighter recruitment school graduation! Got to sit in firetruck! Fireman suggested Cheesecake Factory! Firefighter seems like a fine guy with brains and muscles, three dates so far. Yay!

Lucky #2: I went to Chapel Hill a good week ago to see UNC play some football. We bought some tickets from some people at Craig’s List and then went to eat pizza at California Pizza Kitchen. Yum! There were people at the next table and they asked the waitress if she wanted their extra game tickets. Well, she had to work then still but my friend asked if we could have them instead and yes, they gave us REALLY good tickets for free. We gave ours away to somebody else then and got to sit in row 9, really close to the field. Super cool!

Lucky #3: On the way back from Chapel Hill to Charlotte the speedlimit was 70. Well, no body ever goes the speedlimit but I guess I got a bit carried away and I was going around 83 or so. All of a sudden I see some lights come on behind me and hear sirens. Grrrrreeeaaat…. So the trooper pulls me over. “You’ve got to be careful who you’re passing. You were taking my doors off flying by me”. Ooops! Well he was really nice. I told him I was anxious to get home and catch the Panthers game because I like running when they play. What the heck but it was true… So he checks my license and he comes back and tells me to turn on the radio to this and that channel so that I could listen to the game! I wound up with a warning, not a ticket so that was REALLY lucky! What a nice cop! Well, no more speeding for me, I always said I’d stop after the first warning.

Lucky #4: Oh yeah so I was out sick for 2 weeks and then the week before that my friend Jens was visiting but nonetheless when I went back to the gym, I was super good and ran 5km in one piece!! Didn’t plan on doing that and wasn’t scheduled to do that either but I just kept jogging and at some point the dreadmill said 3.1 miles. Yay! Now I just need to put that to the streets. Ugh.

Lucky #5: My poor sister who was traveling in India got ill with appendicitis and was in hospital over there in the little nook between Nepal and Pakistan and China in the north. SCARY!! Luckily though she did not have to have surgery (she had to remind them to disinfect her skin before setting the IV and stuff like that so yikes!) and got to catch a flight back home the day she got out of hospital and is now safely back home in Germany. Yay! I mean it sucks and all but I think she was lucky in the end!!

There’ve been some other really lucky things happening but I don’t remember them all but yeah overall I have been very blessed. Oh like I was leading my fantasy football league the other day but uhm yeah not anymore after this weird football weekend. How’s everybody doing? Happy fall!!

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