Acute (חריפה) Tonsilitis

Ein Prat started on Monday. Today is Wednesday. And I'm still in Baqa. I went with a friend, lets call her Librevox, who helped me get settled into the system...or really factory...that is - gasp - socialized medicine. Yes, I did feel like I was being processed, but I did get results in the end. They took a strep culture that Thursday. It was negative, I found out the next Sunday. So on Monday I went with Librevox's father to a walk-in clinic at Wolfson which, despite being in Israel, is actually American. As in, everyone there speaks English with no hint of a Hebrew accent. I was a bit astounded. But only a bit. Mostly because the Anglification of Jerusalem doesn't surprise me any more, but also because...I was still feverish.

The doctor that I got at Wolfson was an adorable 70-something Australian man who took one peek my throat, and diagnosed me with what I had diagnosed myself with the night before: Acute Tonsilitis. Great. "Wow, your lymph nodes are swollen!" he said. "I'll give you antibiotics from The States," he said. "It'll be better in 24 hours," he said. Twenty-four hours later, I was still abed with fever.

One full season of House M.D. and twenty-four MORE hours later, I do, in fact, feel better. This has been a lesson in patience for me. A virtue for which I fear I will forever be in need of schooling. These past two days I have been frustratingly inactive, but then, in my mother's wise word: "You don't realize how fragile the human body is until we get sick". And then, well, it hits you, don't it?

So if you were expecting a blog post to catch you up on how awesome Seattle was, telling you about getting coffee with my Grandma (shout out!), seeing Avatar in 3D IMAX, buying her a laptop, etc. Oh, I mention that she has a cult following at BU? She does. Or if you were expecting a blog post about how fascinating Ein Prat has been in the first few days, what with Erez Eshel and Micha Goodman being my teachers and all, living in a shnasty caravan, eating Israeli style (breakfast: salad, lunch:meat, dinner: salad <-- not going to work for me)...Sorry to disappoint. I've learned, so you can learn: Sometimes life is disappointing. But not everything must needs be disappointing. This song, for example, is amazing. Consider HaNachash's new "Od Ach Echad".