day thirty; july 23rd
Woke up early and went on Skype and Mum and Dad told me they had contacted my travel insurance company to find an English doctor I could get into see. They took awhile to get back to me so I ended up looking online and found one really close to me who could see me at 12.30pm. Five minutes later I got an email from the insurance people and he was the recommended doctor! So that worked out well. Stayed at home until then and climbed the thousand steps (minus 950ish) to his office (not very good if you were really, really sick or injured!) and got in straight away. Turns out, as silly and random as it sounds, I have caught a sinus infection and developed asthma from the bad air here! He said he has patients come in all the time who have developed asthma because the pollution is so bad and mixed with the hot air and the fact that every second person smokes here (allergic to tobacco), I’ve developed one big reaction to all of it. Just my luck. So I am coughing so much because my lungs are rejecting the air basically and I am nasally and having severe headaches because my sinus passageways are blocked. Boring stuff to read I’m sorry. and quite pathetic really. So have antibiotics, cough medicine and a ventilator. He said a few more months and I would get used to the air, but I guess I’ll never know! He also worked in Australia and lived a few doors down from where I live now so we had a good conversation about Brisbane. He works in Florence because he met his wife there. Anyway, left there feeling very relieved that nothing too serious was wrong and hopefully all the medicine kicks in quickly.
Had a great lunch and walked around for awhile before going home and having a rest - all the coughing has made my body really sore! Went out early evening and walked through the “shopping district” as I haven’t done so for awhile. Sat on the steps of the Duomo for half an hour and like many others, just watched people go by and the evening start up. Got home, cooked dinner, watched an Italian dubbed movie (it was cool that I could catch on to a lot of what they were saying!) and went to bed, and shock horror, only woke up twice to cough.
