So That Happened.

I am only able to write about this now, as it looks as if Lili has turned a corner. As you know, if you've been keeping up with the smelly blog, Lili got sick a little over a week ago. She has been home now for 10 days. Finally this afternoon, she seems to be a little better and the way I'm able to measure her progress is that she asked for some real food to eat... a tuna sandwich. I'll try to make the boring parts of this long story short and just get to the absolutely mortifying but definitely blog worthy part, asap. When Lili first got sick, way back when, we called SOS Medicin, who will come to your apartment and treat you at home. He prescribed a few things, that ultimately did nothing but I suppose there wasn't anything to treat really. She had a lot of stomach cramping and fatigue but not much else. After a few more days, she started complaining of a sore throat but said her stomach was feeling better. Even though her throat hurt she seemed to be in much better spirits and was even out of bed moving around the house. I decided to make an apt for her anyways with a doctor I had seen before to get a strep test because, she is constantly coming down with strep and this is usually accompanied by stomach pain. So, because she seemed to be feeling much better, I decide that we could just take the metro to the doctors office a few stops away. As we start going down the metro stairs, she sort of hunches over and says she is fine but has some gas (famous last words). We get to the platform and I can see she is slowly loosing color from her face and is getting increasingly uncomfortable. At this point, I think, what are my choices. I can take her back home but then we miss the doctor and we still have to walk back up the stairs, all the way to the apartment. If I can just get her on the train then all we have to do is walk the one block to the doctor's office and we can just take a cab home after that. I ask her a few times if she thinks she can get on the train. We miss the first one. The second one comes and she says she can get on, she'll be fine. We get to our stop and I have to help her off and lead her up the stairs. We get onto the street and start walking, she is looking increasingly pale and is leaning onto me more and more. Finally, she tells me she can't walk her stomach hurts too much, she says she doesn't know what's happening. We happen to be in front of a hotel, so I say do you have to go to the bathroom, there is a hotel right here and I can ask if we can use the bathroom. She says yes, she has to go. So we walk in and I say in my most polite french, excuse me, I don't mean to bother you but my daughter is sick and we are just on our way to the doctor's but she has to go to the bathroom, can she please use the toilet? Surprisingly (this is Paris, you know), he says, yes Madam, go ahead, it's downstairs. At this point Lili is moaning. I start to take her down the stairs and, horror of horrors, she starts to throw up. Just a little at first. On the stairs. Yes, of course, it's carpeted. The man at the front desk hears what's going on and pokes his head around the corner. "Putan!! Go down, go to the toilet, please, Madam!!" And I'm trying, really, I am but Lili won't move. She can't, she's in mid heave. And she throws up again. This time, though, it's not a little bit. "AAAWWW!! PUTAN!!!" Clearly, with a slap on the thigh accentuating the 'putaness' of it all. After that one, we got down the stairs where we had to find the hidden toilet door, which took, what seemed like a bloody eternity. Without getting too specific, Lili went in and dutifully used the facilities as she had originally intended. After that was done, how much did I not want to leave that bathroom? I mean really, to have to do the walk of shame up the soiled staircase, past the front desk and look at the man who was so nice in the beginning of our venture but who turned into a not very nice pissed off parisian. And I couldn't even blame him for being pissed. He was just trying to be nice and this is the thanks he gets? Granted, I'm sure he's not the one who has to do the clean up but no one wants that in their stairwell. We had to leave. So I gathered Lili up (who was feeling much better, by the way) and we climbed the stairs to the front desk. The man who let us in, wouldn't even look at me. So I apologized to his colleague, who responded with "Je vous en prie, madam" (essentially, 'you are very welcome') and we slunk out of there. When we got out I explained to Lili that it is perfectly acceptable to puke in the streets in Paris, people do it all the time. She said she didn't know she had to puke, just thought she had to go to the bathroom. OK, I won't bore you with the rest of the details of our doctors visit, then the visit to the lab and finally, the news that Lili does not have strep and she is actually feeling better today, which I believe is where I started this blog entry. Off to the Alps on Sunday, have a great holiday everyone!