The Guilt of Being Sick Abroad

When I get better, I will never take breathing through my nose for granted again. I will work out every day, spend time with my host family and take advantage of every healthy second! I think that we have all been sick and made promises to ourselves about how we will enjoy our lives once we return to our regular health. 

Something about getting sick while abroad hits different in the worst way possible. Especially with a short program, being sick feels like such a loss of time. I only have three weeks left in Spain and last weekend I was sick with a sinus infection. I hated every second of it, but I did learn a few things from the experience. 

Just go home. I started to feel sick on Tuesday of last week, but I didn’t think too much of it. By the time Wednesday came around I was feeling awful. I was super congested, there was pressure behind my eyes, and I couldn’t hear anything out of one ear. Finally, the teacher I was co-teaching with told me that I should go home and stay home until I felt better. I felt bad for leaving and I kept apologizing. She laughed and told me that I was a volunteer and nobody would be upset if I went home because I wasn’t feeling well and that in Spain it is normal not to come to work when you’re ill.

Go to the clinic! I did just that, I went home and I slept most of the day and felt horrible when I woke up in the evening. I decided to go to the doctor. After seeing the doctor, they told me I had a sinus infection and should take an antibiotic. I paid out of pocket to file a claim with my iNext insurance later. Because I live in a pretty small town, there are only three clinics that take my private insurance and two were booked out until the end of the month. One let me wait around to see if the doctor could squeeze me in. After waiting an hour, I was seen. The doctor wrote my prescription and I went to the clinic to pick up the antibiotic, I was worried about the price since I had to pay for it out of pocket. I even told the pharmacist I only wanted the antibiotic and not the suggested pain killer that went along with it. The antibiotic for 6 days was only six euros, which is just a little over six dollars. 

Rest and don’t feel guilty! The hardest part of this entire situation for me was resting. I came here to help the family speak English, to perfect my Spanish, and enjoy my time in Spain, not to sleep with the curtains drawn. I tried to go to the gym. I thought the walk with fresh air and some exercise might help. It didn’t. I felt a million times worse. I felt weak on my walk over and my body protested as I pushed it through a cardio workout. I felt weird sleeping all day in a house that wasn’t mine while my host family buzzed about with their busy lives. When I finally accepted that I had to rest all day, my energy started coming back. It took two days of rest. I slept, watched movies, drank liquids, and made sure to remind everyone I was sorry for haunting the house and not being more social, but they understood.

Although it might be hard to hear, your body is telling you it needs to rest and recover. If you’re working with kids, you will likely get sick at some point, even if that’s just a cold, and I recommend taking it easy so you can enjoy yourself once you’re healthy again instead of prolonging the sickness by not giving your body the rest it needs. Overall, even in small towns it’s fairly easy to get the medicine you need. Even pharmacies in Spain can give you more medicines than in the US, so for milder symptoms you can tell a pharmacist and they will prescribe you something. This helped me a lot when I got a cold when I arrived, and then a stomach bug a few weeks later that I was able to kick in a day with some help from a stomach stabilizing medicine.