Sick, sick, sick

The last few days in Merida, I began to feel sick. I couldn’t breathe well, I had that sexy throat-y voice and a cough. A miserable cough that would keep me up at night. I blamed it on the yellow fever vaccine I had received a few days earlier.

It sucked.

I don’t do sick. People who know me know this. I hate being sick. Despise it. When I am sick, I crawl into bed and do not emerge until every last bit of sick has been kicked from my body.

However, when traveling, there aren’t really those moments to feel bad for myself for a prolonged period of time (AKA enough time to get healthy). So, I kept on. Not always feeling the best, but knowing there were few options and the yuck would soon go away.

But, not soon enough.

My first night in Lisbon was miserable. I sat in the hostel, curled in a ball on the floor, watching a movie, wishing the awful feeling would go away. It didn’t.

After hacking my way through my first night in Lisbon, two other girls and I decided to visit Sintra, at my friend Abby Tegnelia’s suggestion (check out her blog, The Jungle Princess and follow her on Twitter). We took the train to the little town hovering above the Atlantic and explored its winding and colorful streets and made our way up to the castle.

I had every desire to actually hike up to the top, but when we got there, we found we had a hefty price to pay for the stellar views I was sure we would have … and I was feeling pretty sick at this point, so we opted to skip the hike and just go wander about the curling streets of Sintra.

That night, when we arrived back to Lisboa, I had wanted to walk through downtown, but I knew my body well enough to know when it doesn’t want to move, it shouldn’t.

Before I had left America, I had gotten sick (I swear, normally sick is a rare occurance) and my doctor had given me enough antibiotics to take with me should I need them. Two kinds actually — one for any upper body illnesses and one for the entire body — and advised me to use them sparingly. The Z-Pack I received for the upper-body was only good for one go, so I needed to hold tight to that one.

So, for the next 24 hours, I took it easy, laid in bed, watched TV online, refrained from alcohol, slept in and just relaxed. I also started some antibiotics to rid myself of whatever was ruining my healthy good feelings.

It was necessary.

By the time I arrived to Lagos the next evening, my sick feeling had disappered and the cough (which I had medicated thanks to a pharmacy visit), was letting go of my lungs.

The morning after my arrival in Lagos, I wouldn’t feel sick … just hungover.