Airport Goodbye

Samosa left yesterday to fly home to the States. Initially I had planned on returning to my internship that afternoon. We discussed the idea that I'd put him in a taxi to the airport and then myself grab a bus to the office. It sounds a bit heartless I know. How could I not be there for as long as airport security would permit me? I felt a bit guilty about it and I also had a lot of pent-up I-have-missed-one-week-already-I-NEED-to-go-back-to-my-internship-NOW energy.

I called my supervisors that morning. I told them I was feeling better and was ready to start. They said, "That's nice. But, please, please, get some confirmation from a doctor that you indeed are better. Get some x-rays done. Make sure the pneumonia is gone.

Hmmm. They had a point. The locations I was working in and some of the places I'd be eventually visiting (i.e. kiddie prison) weren't exactly the healthiest spots to hang out in. If I was weak and still highly susceptible, chances were good I'd just get sick again.

So I said, "Ok, I'll do that." Of course, I didn't really know how I'd do that, but I'd deal with logistics later.

Now I had a free pass to take my boyfriend to the airport. I had been feeling kind of bad about not going with him. Here was a way to go and not feel about about not going to the internship either. Seeing as they weren't actually letting me come back to work yet.

Not that I'm any good at goodbyes. And neither is Samosa necessarily. Suffice it to say we were sad and made silly jokes to cover up some of it. And found them funnier than usual. I felt like crying. I remembered fellow classmate's post about a visit from her boyfriend where she's interning in Tanzania.

In some ways I think there are some existential questions that arise during moments like this: when you're utterly involved and immersed in something temporary but saying goodbye to someone permanent. They run the simple lines of what am I doing? Where am I supposed to be? I'm happy to be here in Brazil and excited to be at this internship. At the same time saying goodbye to my boyfriend at the airport makes me feel as though it's not real. Of course, I imagine that when I do return to Austin, Texas in a few months that it won't feel quite real at first either.

And so, I waited outside security while Samosa went through. The groovy but slightly dangerous-looking owl sculpture that he'd bought at the Brique da Redenção caused some consternation when it showed up in the scanner. I could see various hand gestures as the security guard and Samosa tried to communicate despite language barriers. I could see Samosa having to unpack the entire backpack and unwrap the owl and the security guards examining it. I wished I could be there to help out with translation. But in the end, they let him re-pack and go on his way.

I gave him a questioning thumb's up. He returned it. Phew. All okay. We waved goodbye and blew each other kisses and waved goodbye some more. Then he disappeared to find his gate. I didn't feel quite ready to hop on a bus back to my neighborhood, so I wandered up to the third floor of the airport. Turns out it was a mall, complete with cinema, cafes and restaurants, clothing stores, a post office and a number of banks. Wow. It was surreal, especially the cinema part. And amusing considering my prior musings. I figured it was a good time to buy stamps for the postcards we'd written.

The sweet lady in the post office chose the prettiest stamps for me, ones with colorful birds adorning them. They had no adhesive on the back though. And I watched as she patiently ripped out two stamps at a time along their perforated images. She brushed glue across them and carefully pasted them onto each of the seven postcards.

I thanked her and slowly made my way back down to the ground floor. I walked outside the airport and crossed a lane of cars picking up loved ones. I stood against a concrete column waiting for the T5 bus to arrive.

Meanwhile, in Porto Alegre

Studying with Cipote
Originally uploaded by Blue Dragonfly Girl

I am following doctor's orders, convalescing at home and hoping that if I'm good about healing, this pneumonia will never return. The anxious part of me that is calculating internship hours has me reading about academic conceptions of Brazilian youth for a portion of every day.

Luckily, Cipote is here to keep me company through all of this.

Actually, I'm convinced that he's at least 1/3 cat the way he'll just twist himself around so that we can both fit on the couch. Also, like a cat, he'll often just plop himself right down on the notebook that I happen to be writing in.

In his own way, I think he's monitoring both myself and Samosa, making sure we don't study too hard. Or at least that we don't get so engrossed in our thoughts that we don't take a break to give him some love and affection.

However, at the end of the day, it's obvious who his true love is.

His ears begin to perk when he knows it's around the time that she'll be coming home. He gets just a little on edge, unable to fully get comfortable. Usually around this time, he'll also start patrolling the city from the top of the orange couch of this seventh floor apartment, peering down at the rooftops, barking a little when necessary to keep the calm. And when he hears A's keys turning in the lock, he becomes a happy dog indeed.

The Doctor's Diagnosis

Unmade Bed at 6 PM
Originally uploaded by Blue Dragonfly Girl

My awesome friend Ilene, who's interning in South Africa, was recently forced to her bed by a primary and secondary sinus infection. So, I'm wondering, if perhaps in some sort of misguided subconscious attempt at solidarity, my body decided to join hers in feeling miserable...

Yesterday evening I finally agreed that a visit to the Pronto Socorro [emergency hospital], was a prudent idea.

My symptoms began at the beach four days earlier and included a headache, a fever that would come and go accompanied by chills and shivering, nausea, loss of appetite and an aching body. Not the best of times for a six-hour car ride back to Porto Alegre, but so it goes. On Thursday, my fever went down, but I started coughing and my chest felt tight.

On Friday, I was just absolutely exhausted. I put in a little time at my internship (due to some mis-communication, ending up at the farthest location all by myself where I attempted some reading). Later in the day I knew something wasn't right when my boyfriend accidentally elbowed me in the ear as we got up from a couch and I couldn't prevent myself from bursting into tears. "I think I need a nap," I said and fell asleep with Cipote as soon as we returned home.

That evening I checked my temperature and I had a fever again.

I'd been traveling. There were mosquitoes. Who knew, really, what this could be? Dengue? Malaria? Better not to wait any longer.

So, I don't have to keep calling him "my boyfriend" I'll use the alias he chose (perhaps unwittingly?) back in January: Samosa.

Samosa, A. and I, prepared with snacks, water and reading material crossed the street to the pronto socorro. Ready for a long night.

We made it past the door-woman, who would have preferred that I went to another hospital because she really didn't think this was an emergency. But, a nearby nurse, upon hearing of the travels, deemed that it could be, and gained us admission to the line.

"What's been going on?" said the lady who took my passport and was entering it into the computer. "Well, I've had a fever for four days and..."

The lady held her hand up, "That's enough," she said indicating that was good enough for entrance into the facility. I laughed. A. and Samosa reminded me not to smile so much. Gotta look serious about this illness business. All my information from my last visit came up.

Crazy, huh? I mean I have NEVER gone to an emergency room in my life and here I am in southern Brazil and this is my SECOND visit in less than 2 months?!?

We were directed to a second waiting room and eventually A. was allowed to come in with me to help when the intern questioned me. This was invaluable. The intern would have been ready to send me out the door but with some of A's coaxing words to him and the supervising doctor, they agreed to run some tests.

Up we went to the third floor. I thought walking the flight of stairs would be okay, but man was I winded. "Hmmm, perhaps that scary elevator is the way to go after all" I said. A vibrant, curly-haired nurse gave me a cup to pee in. Then, she took my blood. She chatted with me about where she wanted to go in the US: New York and Orlando ("I have to go to Disneyworld") and I admired the vampire figure on the door.

Then, down we went to the second floor for chest x-rays. Here there were two male nurses who seemed to be playing the role of good-nurse bad-nurse. One scowled and told us we wouldn't get the results until tomorrow morning...if we were lucky. He seemed mad just that we asked how long it might take. The other said it would be likely sooner than that and that we could go sit out in the waiting room until they called me name.

Ah, yes, when I appear after they call, "Alison" I still get weird looks. Spelled "Alisson" it's very definitely a man's name here and I don't ever fit the part. Luckily, I got good nurse for the x-rays.

A. chatted with the other patients in her friendly-way and learned about their lives. Most people's injuries served as a reminder to me that whatever I was going through, it wasn't that bad.

We waited about an hour for the x-rays to be read. The results spoke about a concentration of something in the right lung.

Then we took the elevator back to the third floor for the blood and urine results. These were unintelligible to us. We had no idea what to expect. Enough to make a person nervous.

We took all this new material back to where we began and waited for it to be interpreted by the doctor.

"You know," I said to Samosa, "It's one of those situations where of course you want to be well, but if you're well then it doesn't explain why you feel so awful."

A. and I peered over the doctor's shoulders as he read the results. "You have pneumonia," he told me, "You have to stay home for a week."

I felt angry and upset and ready to cry. Later an email from my mother described my problem perfectly. It wasn't exactly the pain of being sick, which of course is no picnic in the park. It was more that, "Being stopped so abruptly in your well-planned and scheduled life is damn hard."

As I processed this news (at least I didn't have dengue or malaria!), I was amused to overhear the intern asking the doctor, "Don't they vaccinate against pneumonia in the States?" in evident surprise that I, as an American, could come down with this illness. I smiled thinking how impressive this was -- this whole experience in the emergency hospital, which was FREE for me, even as a foreigner. I didn't think they realized that I probably wouldn't have even gone to the ER in the United States. Oh, USA, can't we figure out a better health care plan for our country?

And so I'm still raging against the fact that I'm not allowed to go to my internship next week and I feel awful that Samosa has to spend his last week in Brazil as a nurse to me as opposed to being a tourist. However, on the plus side I'm in the best of hands (A. and Samosa are awesome) and A's apartment is the best place I could imagine to recuperate.

Also, it feels really good to finally have an explanation why the last four days of my life have felt so impossibly challenging.