Priceless

So, this is going to be a quick little update since I'm writing from one of my schools and can't handle the French keyboard for long without going crazy... But I'm afraid I won't have time to update much before my surgery (one week from tomorrow--gulp) since I'm off to London this weekend. Woo-hoo!

Nothing too exciting to note. Teaching is same old. I have come to dread lesson planning with every ounce of my soul. Teaching is clearly not my calling. I did a lesson (lesson is a strong word for what I did--it was mostly a lot of laughing and some pronunciation work) on tongue twisters today that went amazingly well. I was chatting with my favorite student after class because he wants an American pen pal and gave me a letter to send today when another English teacher came BARGING into my classroom, waited like point two seconds to see if the student would leave and then lit into me about being too loud with my lesson. She was really pissed off. It was a little bit scary and of course mortifying since she did it IN FRONT of a student. I think she thought since she was speaking in English that he wouldn't understand. But he did--every word. Luckily, he's awesome and just whispered to me that she's really mean to all the students. It was cute, but I was still super embarrassed and feel horrible. I was so excited that ONE of my lessons had actually worked and that the kids had had fun with it and before I could even really revel in my success, a teacher came and shat all over my happiness. What I don't understand is why she didn't send a student in during the class time to ask us to quiet down. I know we were being a little loud, but I had no idea she was so upset. And then to reprimand me, HER COLLEAGUE, in front of one of my students was super unprofessional. Sigh. I just can't win. Either my kids are having fun but are too loud, or they're bored and not participating at all.

Whatever. I only have 12 hours left before I don't have to work again until the beginning of March, thanks to my malfunctioning gall bladder. Speaking of which, I had my consultation with the anesthesiologist yesterday morning. It was fine and pretty quick, and I was able to get all of my questions answered by the super nice secretary who I want to be best friends with. But the most hilarious part was right at the beginning when I sat down in the anesthesiologist's office. The doctor sat down too, but his rolling chair got caught somehow, tipping over, and he fell on the floor. Literally. Doctor in his 40s in a white coat ON THE GROUND. I was trying to make sure he was okay without laughing or being disrespectful, but it was just too funny. I couldn't actually believe it had happened. He got up, said he was fine, and assured me that that had never happened before. I sure hope that's not a regular thing! I'm trusting this guy with my life basically! If he can't even sit in a chair right, how can he possibly be any good at inserting needles in veins?!?!?! But otherwise, he did seem very competent so I'm going to try to forget the image of him on. the. ground. Ha!

THE ALPS!!!!!!

So for being only an hour or so away from the Alps, it sure took me a long time to GET to them. And I need to go back immediately! A group of us finally got our shit together and registered for a ski trip to L'Alpe d'Huez with this organization called SkiMania. For 40 euros, they'll drive you in a bus from the center of the city to one of 5 or 6 ski areas within 3 hours of Lyon, give you a snack, provide the lift ticket, and even show a movie on the way back. Rentals from their contact store in Lyon are less than 20 euros so it's a pretty incredible deal. Especially when you see the RIDICULOUS mountains and realize that you're IN THE ALPS!

I can't even begin to describe how amazingly breathtaking the mountains were so the pictures will have to do the work, although I promise it's even better than the pictures. It was just an incredible day. 

We went to get our rental stuff on Friday, and it was pretty hilarious to cart it through Lyon on the metro. 

Then I woke up at 5:30 on Saturday morning to get to the bus by 6:30 where I met Sara, Patrick, Ben, Greg, Greg's friend from London who was visiting and two other people who we didn't actually realize were going on the same trip. Most of our bus passed out on the 2 1/2 hour ride. 

But Sara, Patrick, and I took approximately 8,000 pictures just from the bus window.

They gave us ski maps and our little lift tickets, which are actually magnetic cards that you just put in your chest pocket and that are automatically read by machines you pass to get on the lifts. So much better than the ridiculous ticket system in the U.S. Then they let us loose on the slopes with a dire warning about how the bus wouldn't wait for anyone so we'd better be back by 4:30 ON THE DOT. And off we went. 

It wasn't the clearest day ever, but it was warm and the snow was perfect since France has been getting dumped on this year. Plus, there were barely any lines anywhere since L'Alpe d'Huez is ridiculously ginormous. We saw maybe 1/10 of the 149 miles of skiable area. Sara and I were the only snowboarders, and it was only her 5th time so we headed to the easy slopes to ease in.

Plus, we wanted to see Greg try out skis for the first time ever, which was predictably hilarious. :) After finally finding him and his friend and stopping for an amazing little picnic of bread, saucisson, cheese, and coffee (all of which Greg had brought with him in his backpack!), all 8 of us headed up to the very top of ski area: Pic Blanc at 3,330 meters. In spite of the clouds, we were all still blown away by the view. 

Apparently, on a clear day, you can see 1/5 of France! I'll just have to keep going back until it's clear, I guess... :) Only one of us was brave enough to ski down from there since they were seriously steep black diamonds and it was already late in the day. The rest of us took the gondola back down to a lower level and went from there. Call me a chicken, but I'm already scheduled for one hospitalization and am definitely not looking for any more!

We made it back to the bus with plenty of time (the place was so huge that we gave ourselves more than enough time to somehow navigate back) and proceeded to buy the boulangerie out of baguettes for the ride home to Lyon. Then we had a little feast on the bus and passed out.

So yeah, the snow was amazing (only two ice spots the entire day), the mountains were incredible (I kept almost wiping out every time I looked up and noticed them all over again), the crowds were nonexistent, and the price was perfect. I seriously may never ski in New England again.

Updates...

Well, I fell off the earth again and just haven't had time to get to the all-important world of blogging... Plus, I haven't been thinking about much else besides my malfunctioning gall bladder, and I'm sure no one wants to hear much more about that! But the guilt has been eating at me, and an update is long overdue so here goes.

Gall Bladder

An obligatory update, I'm sorry. No new pain at all since the infamous ER night (thank god), but I did meet with a surgeon on Monday. (My doctor wanted to send me to the ER hospital, but they couldn't see me until the end of January. Plus, I'm a little scarred from that visit, so I found another surgeon's name on the U.S. Embassy website who supposedly spoke English--not so much true--and ended up getting a much quicker appointment date since he works at a private clinic. An aside: not entirely sure what the difference between public and private health care here in France is, besides perhaps slightly quicker care for a slightly higher price with private doctors/clinics.) The surgeon's name is Roland Donné, and he's a super nice older guy with perhaps the sweetest secretary on the face of the earth. He works at Clinique Saint Louis, which is a 10-minute walk from one of my schools (potentially awkward), and even though the clinic itself isn't much to look at and was a little maze-like inside, I think I randomly hit on a really good place. I went over my symptoms and he looked at all my medical documents. Then he drew this hilariously elaborate diagram of the digestive tract and where the gall bladder is and what its role is and explained that I have the classic symptoms of a problematic gall bladder so we should probably get that sucker out sooner rather than later. Keep in mind, this is still ALL in French. I continue to impress myself with the fact that even though I often have trouble following simple movie plots, I am somehow able to have in-depth medical discussions without any problems. Maybe it's more of a survival skill thing since we're talking about one of my ORGANS... Anyway, then we went back to the amazingly sweet secretary and they basically let me pick when I want to have the surgery. So my lucky day is February 3rd. Think good thoughts for me as they blow my abdomen up with air, stick a tiny camera through my belly button, and make three little incisions, which is miraculously all they need to extract the gall bladder and all those pesky little gallstones. Kind of amazing. And don't stop sending those good vibes after the 3rd because I am crossing my fingers for a quick recovery so I'm good to go to enjoy my birthday the next week!!! They're making me stay in the hospital for a couple of days after the operation so they can monitor things, but I really, really, REALLY hope it won't be longer than 2 or 3 days. I can't use my cell phone in the hospital and won't have internet access so it might be kind of brutal. My roommate is organizing a rotating visiting schedule on Facebook (Save the Date: Gall Bladder Extravaganza), which I find hilarious, and I'm in the process of gathering a million books to bring with me, but I still can't imagine that being in a hospital cut off from the world is going to be much fun... So that's that. But according to my surgeon, I can eat and drink whatever and can travel (London, here I come in 15 days!) so that was good to hear.

Teaching

Unfortunately, I've still had to be teaching while navigating this ridiculous world of the French health care system. C'est dommage. I think most of us assistants have hit a bit of a hump as far as our actual JOB here goes. Lesson planning continues to be a pain in the butt since nothing seems to work for some of the classes, and it's hard to tell if we're making any difference at all with the kids. Sigh. But I do usually have a good time once I'm actually at the school and doing my lessons. I only have two really crappy classes (I made one of them sit in silence for the last 5 minutes of class this week because they were so bad--LONGEST 5 minutes of my life) so liking 10 out of 12 of my working hours is pretty good. :) Although my favorite part of working in the schools last week had nothing whatsoever to do with students I actually teach. Two students who aren't in my classes had asked me before Christmas vacation if they could get my e-mail address to give to their mother because she is looking to find families in Boston for them to do an exchange this summer. Their mom e-mailed me and asked me to come for lunch to talk about Boston and my experience in Lyon. I was a little weirded out, but I went last week and it was adorable. Their mom has amazing English and lives in the cutest little house about a 2-minute walk from one of my schools. Her children are twins, a boy and a girl, and are the most adorable, well-behaved 13-year-olds I have ever met. We spoke in French mostly during lunch since they're only in their first and second years of English. But lunch was delicious, and I had such a nice time! It also turns out that they have a cousin who is my age and is a children's book illustrator. They showed me some of her books, and I actually really like her work, not that I have any power to do anything, but I'm going to e-mail her and see if she wants to meet up. If nothing else, maybe I will be able to add to my sadly pathetic number of French friends... But the point is that I fell in love with this family and want to do anything I can to help them set up an exchange in Boston. The mother would prefer two separate families with children around the same age somewhere in the Boston/Cambridge area, and she would fly over with them and is willing to pay for food, etc. and/or host students in her home in Lyon later on. She mentioned a 2-3 week exchange sometime between late May and late August. So, LET ME KNOW IF YOU KNOW ANYONE!!!

Babysitting

And of course I've been babysitting, as always. In fact, PE and Aurore were another highlight of my week last week. They were so happy to see me after Christmas vacation that I don't think either one of them stopped talking for the first 45 minutes I was there last Monday. Plus, PE had gotten this amazingly huge Star Wars lego battleship thing for Christmas so we spent most of last week assembling it. I'm sure his mom would LOVE to know that's what she's paying me for... But legos have always been a secret obsession of mine. I remember helping my brother put them together and secretly coveting all of them.  We still had a few touchy moments. PE continues to HATE doing his daily dictations with me, and he decided this week to make a bunch of stupid mistakes on purpose in the hopes that that would convince his mom that it wasn't helping so he could stop doing them. It definitely didn't work, and I feel so badly for him. He only made 3 mistakes in his huge dictation at school last month, which is amazing, but his mom isn't happy unless he has 0 mistakes, which is virtually impossible. It just makes me want to slap her and remind her that he's NINE years old and has the rest of his life to be stressed out. Good lord! Could he please just enjoy what little he has left of his childhood?!?!?!? In rebellion, I let him have snowball fights with me and Aurore everyday walking home from school since they're not supposed to do that either. Sigh.

Fun

Of course, the past couple of weeks have not been without fun. I went to the Gallo-Roman  Museum, and it was kind of amazing to see how incredibly old this city really is. Plus, the ruins and the amphitheater looked so pretty in the snow!

Lyon rarely gets snow and almost never snow that sticks. We've already had three pretty major blizzards so far--nothing compared to Boston or Maine--but last week it snowed for basically three days straight and we got 8 inches! 

Most of the city (and a huge portion of the country) kind of shut down since they just aren't equipped to handle that kind of snow. A bunch of us celebrated the blizzard this past weekend by holing up in my apartment in what we termed the Time Capsule (I mentioned the inaugural Time Capsule weekend in a previous blog in December). It was actually kind of an epic weekend with no less than 8 people at all times, and one night up to 11, hanging out in PJs and watching movies and bumming around. We call it the Time Capsule because we close all of the automatic shutters in the apartment and it basically becomes a cave and you have no absolutely no idea what time of day it is. 

Pretty hilarious. We couldn't decide if we were huge nerds for having a sleepover as 20-somethings or super cool because it was basically like a three-day party... 

Either way, it was a good time. And I have never eaten so well. We had Ruth's homemade soup on Friday night that was to DIE for, Sara's homefried potatoes along with me and Rachel's ginormous 18-egg omelet on Saturday morning/afternoon, Ryan's unreal chicken and veggie curry with rice on Saturday night, and Sara, Alicia, and Zane's chocolate chip pancakes on Sunday, followed by my chocolate chip banana bread. Yum. And I bet my gallstones loved every minute of it. :) We did take a couple of breaks from the Time Capsule and ended up relaxing the terms of the phrase to just include staying together as one huge group for a period of 48 hours or more because people got a little antsy being enclosed... On Saturday night, we went out for a huge snowball fight (that was sabotaged by two little neighborhood boys who took on all 10 of us--one of them had a killer arm and I wanted to recruit him for the Red Sox in a big way after one of his ice balls almost took off my head with this crazy spin!) and made the most adorable snowman (that we think the boys destroyed as soon as we came inside--sigh).

Then, covered in snow, we trekked to the store en masse for provisions. I'm not sure how soon we'll be able to handle another Time Capsule weekend--sleeping three to a bed, two to a slowly deflating air mattress, and more on the floor isn't exactly the most restful weekend, and it's a bit stressful hosting that many people for such a long period of time. But it was definitely a good time.

Last, but not least, I had the luck to go to yet another soccer game. Ben got free (really good!) tickets from work for the Lyon-Metz game last night so he, Patrick, and I went. And Lyon finally won! 3-0! It wasn't too cold, and they actually played pretty well. Yay! It was one of the playoff rounds for the Ligue 1 championship so that made it even more exciting that they won.

But even better (and seriously, what could be better than free tickets to a soccer game?!?!?) is that a group of us is going skiing/snowboarding in the Alps this Saturday. WOO-HOO!!!!! There's this cool organization that runs pretty cheap trips to some of the bigger mountains in the area so for about 65 euros, we get bussed to the mountain WITH a lift ticket and rental equipment. And with all this snow, I bet the conditions will be to die for. At the very least, it will definitely be better than the crappy ice that passes as snow on the ski mountains in Maine... I can't wait!!!

More than you ever wanted to know about the gallbladder, mine in particular...

And here it is, folks, the post none of you have been waiting for and one I never thought I would be writing (at least before the age of 50)... Turns out I do, in fact, have gallstones. Not just one but many. According to the cute, super nice ultrasound technician, I am "plein de calculs biliaires" (full of gallstones). Kind of gross, huh? And bizarre. Who knew? Although my grandmother had gallstones at age 35 (I'm only 8 years early), and I HAVE been known to love me some cheese and eggs and other super fatty cholesterol-high foods... But for all those of you who want to point your finger at France and French food and blah, blah, blah, apparently gallstones take 5-20 years to become large enough to be a problem so this whole business started a long, long time ago.

Since I'm trying to look on the bright side of all this, I'll start at the beginning because it's kind of a funny story. Basically, immediately following my brother's departure (psychosomatic maybe?) I had intense pain in my abdomen out of nowhere. It was unlike anything I have ever felt before. I couldn't move or get comfortable and even breathing was painful. My innards felt like they were being squeezed into a tiny little ball and then jumped up and down on over and over by some hugely fat person. It lasted for maybe 20 minutes and then randomly disappeared. I was mostly just relieved that it was gone, thought it was something I had eaten at dinner, and went back to sleep since it was still some ungodly hour of the morning. I felt a little off all day though and so didn't eat much and just laid low. As I was finally getting dressed and getting ready to go to dinner at a friend's house, I had another attack. I got back in my PJs, cancelled the dinner plans, and crawled into bed with my computer to do some preliminary research. After another attack a couple hours later, I was convinced that I had appendicitis and was going to die in my sleep with a burst appendix and no one was going to find me until my roommate stumbled upon my rotting body when she came back from vacation. But I decided not to panic and to just try to see a doctor the next day.

I woke up on Monday feeling okay but scared to eat. I should have called the doctor whose number I had right away, but you always forget how painful and scary something is when it's not happening and I didn't know how to describe my symptoms in French and I just kind of hoped they would disappear on their own. So I didn't call until after I had another attack that afternoon and the office was already closed. At this point, I had completely freaked myself out with the whole appendicitis diagnosis even though I had, by this time, discovered gallstones on the internet too, which seemed to fit my symptoms better. When I had another attack at 8 that night and it didn't end after a half an hour like the other ones, I called the emergency number (conveniently on our fridge due to some random neighborhood mailing) and blurted out some random French words about pain and stomach and appendicitis. Halfway through the call, the pain went away and I immediately felt stupid. There's a hospital one metro stop away so I told the guy I could get there myself, but he said it was a huge hospital (which it is) and convinced me that it would be easier if I just came in an ambulance. Awesome. So the little ambulance people came and knocked on my door and busted in with a wheelchair and some scary-looking breathing machine asking where Mademoiselle Meyer was. I waved my hand, tried to explain that I had HAD pain but that it was gone, and meekly followed them to the elevator and out to the ambulance feeling extremely stupid. The guy tried to make me feel better about it, but when we got the hospital .2 seconds later (I could have walked really easily), I felt even more embarrassed. First ride in an ambulance - check.

They took all my info., and thankfully I had already received my French social security number allowing me to be covered by their awesome health care program (take some notes, America--seriously!), and then I took a seat in the rather sparse and dingy waiting room. Luckily, I had brought my last English book, Watership Down, with me and so I proceeded to lose myself for 4 hours in the wonderful world of rabbits. Who knew eating clover and digging holes could be so interesting? But yeah, it was a long wait. There were definitely a couple interesting moments to break it up though. Some homeless guy came in about two hours in and just sat himself down in the waiting room and proceeded to talk to himself really loudly. It took the admin. people about 45 minutes to realize he wasn't a family member of a patient or anything so someone came over and asked him to leave. That did NOT make him happy. He ran over to the desk yelling and making obscene gestures and stumbled out. He came back not one, not two, but THREE times in the next half hour. He didn't seem to remember his earlier encounter because he was relatively civil when they asked him to leave the other times. Finally, a security guard came and escorted him out and must have been posted at the outside door or something to make sure he didn't come back. Very random. Then a bit later, a different security guard came over and asked me, in English, if I was the American. (Apparently word travels fast in the ER...) He was from Ethiopia and spoke pretty flawless English. We talked a little while about health care and political differences between France and America, but it was past midnight and I wasn't really up for a serious discussion. Even though I LOOKED fine, I was in the ER for god's sake and really didn't feel fine.

I had two more pain episodes while I was waiting, but when they finally called me in to see a doctor at 1:00 in the morning, I felt okay. The doctor/intern looked like he was maybe 14 and like he'd been working for three weeks straight. I felt really badly for him, especially when he kept having to repeat things and make stupid miming gestures so I could understand his questions. Still don't know if I really understood everything he asked. They had me give them a urine sample, put me on a stretcher, took a ton of blood, hooked me up to a saline water IV (first IV ever - check), and wheeled me out into the hall with a bunch of other mostly older, sicker people since there weren't any rooms left. Suffice it to say, it was really strange and I have never felt more out of place. The hospital was a public hospital (later in the week, I experienced a private hospital and WOW, what a difference!) and was clearly understaffed and kind of dingy. I kept trying not to breathe because I was afraid I would contract something worse than whatever I had. At one point, I had to flag down a nurse because my IV bag was empty and blood seemed to be flowing out of me into the bag, which I didn't think was normal. It wasn't, I guess, because she held the bag up and the blood flowed back in. A little unsettling.

At 2:30, things finally slowed down. They turned the lights in the hall out to let us sleep, I guess, and the nurses and doctors congregated in a little room off the hallway. I had just resigned myself to the fact that I would be spending the night on an uncomfortable stretcher in this creepy hallway next to a random snoring guy when the 14-year-old intern came back and told me everything was normal, that I DIDN'T have appendicitis, and that I could go. He gave me three sheets of paper: a prescription for some pain medication, a doctor's order for an ultrasound, and a doctor's order for a bunch of other tests whose abbreviations I couldn't understand. He told me to find a general doctor to see within the next couple of days and basically peaced out. I wandered back out to the waiting room where they said they had my address and would send a bill (can't wait) and then I just let myself out. Keep in mind, at this point it was 3:30 in the morning, it was raining, I hadn't eaten in two days, and I had just spent 7 hours in the ER and still didn't know what was going on with me. In retrospect, I should have asked them to call a cab or something I guess, but I was exhausted and so tired of attempting to speak French, and I knew that my apartment really wasn't that far away. I did get a little lost trying to get out of the hospital complex and was envisioning horrible scenes of someone jumping out and attacking me in my weakened state, but eventually I found my way to a real street and was home in 10 minutes.

I called the doctor the next morning to set up an appointment and went to see her on Wednesday morning, which was another weird experience. Her office is literally NEXT door to my apartment, which is really convenient, but it's nothing like my doctor in the states. Apparently, the doctor herself answers the phone (no secretary or anything) and I think she might actually live adjacent to the office too. I basically let myself in and went to sit in a waiting room with several other people. The doctor would come in intermittently and without even saying a patient's name, someone would get up and follow her. I guess it was just in order of arrival so I just got up and followed her after everyone who was there before me had come and gone. I described my pain, gave her the hospital papers, and she did a super quick check of my blood pressure and stomach. Then she wrote another note, told me to go to the lab next door for blood work and to some other random hospital for an ultrasound and to call her when I had the results back to make another appointment. Then I paid her 22 euros, which I get reimbursed amazingly enough, and I left, more bewildered than ever, although she did say she agreed that it was probably gallstones. Gee, thanks.

I went over to the lab (also next door: my apartment has turned out to be perfectly located regarding all these health care needs--no wonder there's so many old people in this neighborhood!) and got more blood taken from the nicest lab guy ever who spoke English to me and said that it was going to be kind of expensive but he wouldn't cash my check until I'd come back to tell him I'd been reimbursed by the government. So cute! Then I called the ultrasound hospital and got an appointment for the next day. Still wasn't sure what to eat and what not to so I just didn't really. My internet searching kept turning up varying things. All of them said to steer clear of foods high in fat but some also said to not eat citrus fruits and some said not to drink at all while others said wine actually helped prevent gallstones. So confusing. Not that I was really in the mood to drink though...

Anyway, so yesterday I trekked to the other hospital for the ultrasound, conveniently also just a 10-minute walk. It was a gorgeous, blue sky day, and since I hadn't had any pain since Monday, I sort of convinced myself that everything had been in my head and I was going to be fine. Riiiiiiiight. The hospital was adorable and clean with a beautiful Christmas tree and a little cafe, and there were no lines and everyone was super friendly. It was a completely different experience from Monday night. Granted, I wasn't in the ER and I really don't know the difference between public and private hospitals here, but there clearly DOES seem to be a difference.

The ultrasound guy was really nice so even though it was kind of strange to be getting an ultrasound with the gel and the whole bit (I kept expecting him to say "And it's a healthy, little girl!" although I would have DIED if he had...), I wasn't too weirded out. Of course, then he said that everything was normal except that I definitely had gallstones and a lot of them and would probably need to have my gallbladder out. No one wants to be told they're full of weird, little yellow, cholesterol, bile deposits OR that they might have to give up an organ, even if it's not particularly vital. I got my ultrasound, paid some money (that I also get reimbursed for), and walked back home in a bit of a daze. I then proceeded to stalk the shit out of "gallbladder surgery" on-line, which was both reassuring and not. It's one of the easiest and most common surgeries done today, and they usually do a laparoscopic surgery instead of opening you up entirely. Most people recover and are back to work within a week without any further problems. But it's still surgery and it's still giving up an organ that stores bile, which I would rather have stored than roaming around elsewhere in my body, and there are still possible complications before, during, and after surgery. The short story is: who wants to be thinking about this when they're 27 years old and in FRANCE?!?!?!? What if I can never eat fatty foods again?!??! How can I live here without being able to eat cheese? I mean, celebrating New Year's Eve last night (speaking of which, Happy New Year--yay 2010!!!) without being able to eat the crepes and raclettes all around me or drink champagne was a little bit brutal, I'm not gonna lie...

But okay, it could be a lot worse. And at least I'm in France and not some random other country without excellent health care and at least I have health insurance because in the U.S., even with my good health insurance from my job at Houghton, I would be out a good chunk of money from deductibles/co-pays/etc. And at least I don't have anything hugely important and amazing coming up in the near future that this surgery, if I do it, would jeopardize. I mean, really, if I'm going to have to get my gallbladder out, this is PERFECT timing! Bring it on, gallstones!