Sick in Spain

Well, it has happened.  I am sick in Spain.  Luckily it is not anything too deadly for my first sickly experience in Europe, but it is still not terribly fun.  I am pretty sure I have some sort of cold.  I have been feeling a bit under the weather for a while, but today and yesterday it got much worse and seems to be settling into my chest.  I also have a low-grade fever which is usually not a good sign.  Because of this, I decided to brave the Spanish Pharmacy.  Let me tell you, I should have done my prep work because I realized when I got there that there is no grabbing the meds you want and leaving.  Also, not once in my many years of Spanish studies did we ever go over the proper vocab for describing symptoms of various illnesses.  With Marissa’s help I was able to muddle through and she gave me some medicine.  I am not entirely sure that it is the right medicine, but at least I can hope for the placebo effect.

For those who are interested in what medicine you can get by simply walking into a Spanish pharmacy, I decided to do some digging to understand what I was going to put into my body.  First on the list is 650 mg of paraceptol, which is acetaminophen.  There is also 10 mg of codeína/codeine. Yep I said it, you can walk into a pharmacy and buy a medicine with codeine in it for less than 4€; it seems so weird.  Finally there is a bunch of Vitamin C, which goes by ácido asórbico.  I don’t know what exactly it is supposed to be doing, but I think/hope that it is helping.  It is also weird that instead of a tablet to chew or swallow, or even a liquid to take, it is a powder to be mixed with water.  It tastes vaguely of oranges, but is not tasty at all.  Oh well, hopefully I will be feeling much better before I am working with the kids on Wednesday.