A Victorian Lifestyle: Illness and Photos

Hello all. My previous post left you all with me feeling tired and ill, so if you don't mind, I would like to continue on that topic. Friday night I went to the house and went straight to bed. Sure enough, I quickly developed a fever and chills and stayed in bed for the rest of the night. I slept little, and in the morning I cancelled all my plans for the day. My fever was much worse, accompanied by a headache, sore throat, pain behind my eyes, and it felt like my body was on fire. If I liked Disco......(Burn Baby Burn Disco Inferno........). Perhaps this is what dragons feel like. Anyway, I got up out of bed maybe 3 times and my guest family was wonderfully accommodating. The end result was me getting a call from my parents, us praying about it, me falling asleep and then waking up later around 7 p.m. with a broken fever. I was still feeling pretty weak because I'd had no appetite all day. Thankfully, I woke up Sunday morning feeling much better with no fever and only a sore throat.....so I thought.
Our agenda had scheduled for us a trip to Upper Austria. We were to meet on the bus at a crisp 6:50 a.m. Conveniently enough for me, I had woken up at 2 a.m. and had not yet been successful in falling back asleep. I got dressed and felt some weird prickly pain on my foot, right in between my big toe and the pad of my foot. I didn't think anything of it and assumed I had somehow gotten a blister or something of the sort. I got to the bus and we were on our way.
--Here I'd like to interject and thank all of the friends I have made here for being so considerate of me these past couple of days. They have been gems, all of them. --
Our journey progressed past lakes and mountains, from Beautiful Baroque to the Heartwrenching Concentration Camp Mauthausen. (I took pictures, however, I will not be posting them online. If you would like to see them/talk to me about the experience, please ask.) As we walked a little here and there, I found that my foot was hurting me a lot more...then my other foot as well...then I found a little red dot on my thumb that was tender...then a few more. What on earth??? Walking got more difficult as the day went on (not terribly bad, but a nuisance none the less), and I thought nothing more of my feet than simply blisters...right?

Bah.

Once we were back in Salzburg I checked, and no blisters were to be found. Instead, there were little bumps, some reds bumps, and two sad little somewhat swollen feet. I tried to reason what it was and thought maybe I'd had an allergic reaction to a detergent maybe but it was late enough to just go to sleep and figure it out the next day. Monday (today) morning nothing had improved. My feet still hurt as well as my fingers, and I still could not reason through what had caused it. My guestfamily urged me to talk to the Director of the college here and see a Doctor. I don't even like seeing Doctors in the States...let alone in other countries. Despite that, I got an appointment set up, and went to see a German doctor. (Honestly, when I said I wanted to experience everything here...I guess I really meant everything.) The doctor's visit resulted in me gaining what I now call my "Foot Cream" and no new knowledge of what caused it. Afterwards, however, when I was talking to some of the girls, they told me about how the same situation had happened to them after they had had a fever. They described a similar experience, so I am counting that as the reason for the burning sensation happening on my feet right now. (I feel like I'm walking on fire...yeah, I'm just that cool apparently haha.) If there is no improvement in the next couple of days or so, I'll have a problem because we leave for Vienna, but until then, I kind of hobble on my heels. It's actually quite fun to watch. : )

Hellbrunn Palace

Otherwise, everything has been/is still wonderful! Sunday was a great day and as a treat for reading through that lengthy narrative here are some pictures for you! Enjoy!