French lesson #1

For those of you who just want to see beautiful pictures and cute kids, ignore this post. If you want a laugh at my expense, read on...

I have a cold. Not the little sniffly kind, the kind where both ears are plugged and things sound like I'm under water and I go through about 2 boxes of kleenex in a morning. This is especially fun living in the mountains where every altitude change feels like a needle running into my head via my ears. So I got desperate yesterday and went to a French pharmacy. They are known for having really good meds here.

My tutor wrote a few phrases for me to use such as 'Can you please give me something for my nose and stuffy head and ears'. She said if you tell the pharmacist what is wrong, they will give you just what you need. And Brinlee taught me that if you can't communicate with words, just play charades. Brinlee is my dear friend living in Brazil, so she knows how to do these things.

So, I thought I communicated well, I was so proud of myself. Pride comes before the fall, right? So I went home and looked at the 3 medicines they gave me. One was a nasal spray, not too excited about that. One was ear drops. But I hadn't changed altitudes much that day, so they weren't really that bad. The last was a little powder packet you mix with water and take. Sounds like a theraflu or something. I recognized the paracetamol (acetaminophen) and vitamin C on the active ingredients list. The third must be something for allegies or something, I reasoned. So I mixed it up and drank it down. It wasn't too bad.

Then, about 1/2 hour later, I felt a bit woozy. I thought, I better lay down, quickly. So I went over to the couch, but first I grabbed my phone. I laid there for a few minutes and thought, I may not wake back up, this is so strong. So I called Kevin at work and asked him to call me at 11 so I can go and pick up the kids at 11:30. Umm, he says. It's 10 til 11. Wow, where did that hour go? And, by the way, where is Piper and what is he doing all this time??
So I went upstairs and Pipey is playing really nicely with some toys in his room. So I laid down on my bed and called Kevin back.

Me: I can't get up. Really, I can't move, I don't think I would be safe driving, is there any way you can come get the boys at school?

Little aside, the boys' school lets out at 11:30 every day for a two hour lunch and then the older one goes back at 1:30 for the afternoon, convenient, eh?

Kevin: shuffling through things. I can do that. Do you really need me to?

Me: What? Who are you? What time is it?

Thankfully Kevin was able to skip a meeting and come home to pick up the boys and I thank God that Piper played nicely until he came home, because I slept solid until about 3:30PM. I made myself get up then despite still being really woozy. I showered and drove, carefully, to pick up the oldest at school and then home and then to church in the evening for AWANA.

Lessons learned:
1) It's one thing to order a new car key when you hardly know French, it's another thing completely to get meds, even if you're really good at charades.

2) The pharmacist must not have noticed I had Piper with me when she gave me the sleeping drug disguised as cold medicine. Or maybe she did, they give you 'just what you need'.

3) I have just the thing for the boys for the next flight over the Atlantic.

4) Pheniramine maleate is an antihistamine used to treat allergic conditions such as hay fever or urticaria. It has relatively strong sedative effects, and may sometimes be used off-label as an over-the-counter sleeping pill in a similar manner to other sedating antihistamines such as diphenhydramine.

This is what I googled today as the 'unknown' drug in that powder I took. Only 0.025g did that to me :) And it only took me about 3 seconds to google that.
By the way, I'm still all stuffed up and sniffly.