Yesterday, I took a sick day. Over the last three years, this was my 2nd sick day. Now this is not to say that I haven't been sick. I have. It's just that many of my sicknesses have been well timed.

I've been fighting off a recurrent infection for, oh, the last three months. Not fun. I've been to see the doctor three times. I've gotten three different antibiotics and each time nothing has worked. The infection has come back.

This week I lost my cool when I realized that the infection was starting again and that this time around I was also having kidney pain. Just for the record, that's un-awesome. I spent a large part of Wednesday wanting to cry and after talking to my friend A. on Wednesday night she convinced me that I had to get a second opinion. (Thanks, A.)

So Thursday morning after my classes I called Takuda hospital for an appointment with an Urologist but they couldn't get me in until Monday morning. Enter tears. This lead me back to the Deputy Director at school--a woman who had helped me earlier this year with the same problem. She was incredible and rallied the troops so to speak. She had our school doctor making class, there were calls into Takuda and after all of this a plan was hatched.

The hope was that I could go back to Greenberg (the clinic next to the school) and that with the previous day's phone calls and the presence of D. the school nurse a diagnosis and a solution to my problem could be reached. Only it couldn't. I openly cried at the reception desk of the clinic in front of a lot of Bulgarian onlookers when my first doctor told me there was nothing wrong with me passed me off to the gynecologist. The result of these tears was that my first doctor decided to take another urine sample and to draw blood.

Then I got to see the gynecologist. He determined that there was nothing gynecologicly wrong with me. He of course didn't speak English so after my exam he tells D. all of this.<em> Well, that's nice to know</em>. However, he then preceded to tell D. that I have very nice looking eggs and that getting pregnant would solve my problems and he finished this up with a joke about the fact it shouldn't be too hard to find a nice Bulgarian man because I am young, pretty and American.

D. was wise enough not to translate that part for me while in with the gynecologist. She told me later. I think because she thought that I would be happy to know the part about my reproductive system. Maybe I should have been. But the feminist me sat there seething--what antiquated advice: pregnancy will solve your problems. D. shrugged the whole thing off as a doctor joke.

After this I went back down the hall to see the results from my tests. The doctor declared me fine. The doctor declared me fine. My blood work was normal and there was no bacteria in my urine. I complained about my back pain and explained that I thought it was related to my kidneys and in no uncertain terms, she told me that it could not be related. She wrote a prescription for painkillers and sent me out. For good measure on my way out she told me to wear 100% cotton bikinis, to wash them separately from the rest of my laundry and that this must be an American disease not a European one. Her final parting comment was that she was sorry I was in such a bad mood today.