Author: Charles Céleste Hutchins

Today, I went back to the hospital near my house to get a blood test, as scheduled. Then I met Michelle and she gave me a ride out to the Hôpital Américain. It’s a small, private hospital in a far-flung rich suburb (we have those too, it’s not all poor kids burning cars) where, rumor has it, Sarkozy lives. The hospital has valet parking, lovely grounds and reminds me visually of a Nordstroms from the outside.

I was directed to the emergency room because I did not have an appointment. I felt somewhat sheepish sitting in an emergency room for indigestion, but given it was terrible enough that it felt life-threatening and they told me to go there, etc etc, anyway. There were far far fewer people waiting there than there were this morning for the walk-in dermatology clinic at St. Louis. Since it’s a private hospital, it’s not on the French system and it charges about 3 times as much (which is still much less than American hospitals in America), the waiting room was full of rich foreigners or others desperate to speak to anglophone medical types.
I saw the doctor relatively shortly after I arrived. He told me that if I’ve been taking antibiotics for three weeks, I can just stop and it will be ok. If later I have lyme symptoms again (like late-stage lyme) I can always just take more antibiotics then. I pointed out that the ghostly remains of my lyme rash are still visible and I still have symptoms and Yahoo medical says 4 – 6 weeks for people with my symptom set. Not that he wasn’t more knowledgeable than yahoo medical, but I don’t want to have lyme forever. So he told me I could do whatever I wanted and gave me a prescription for strong antacids. This is an improvement over my experiences at the pharmacy, where they kept giving me stuff for problems I wasn’t having. Last time, the pharmacist gave me brewer’s yeast. It’s good for you, sure, but isn’t it crazy to take yeast while on antibiotics?
So I feel much less godauful having only tried one of the two prescribed medicines. Or, I could just stop taking everything and hope for the best. The blood test I had early this morning was for lyme, but I don’t get the results back for 2 weeks, which which time, I will have stopped taking antibiotics anyway. Tomorrow was the day my original course of antibiotics would have finished, if I had not become allergic. Stopping = tempting.
Tags: Paris, Lyme, Lyme Disease, Celesteh

Some people treated for early Lyme disease have brief episodes of headache, muscle and joint pain, and fatigue that may continue for an extended period of time after treatment. These symptoms usually go away on their own within six months and do not require further treatment.
During the first 24 hours of antibiotic therapy, you may have a higher fever, redder rash, or greater pain. This is not an allergic reaction to the drug. It may mean that the bacteria are rapidly dying.

(ibid) Ok, so I had that, but longer than 24 hours afterwards. My joint paint did not start until after I had started taking antibiotics. I really wish I could talk to an expert or somebody.
Tags: Lyme Disease, Celesteh

Yay, another allergic rash! I get to back to the Hôpital again!

Somebody, for the love of god, tell me an anglophone doctor I can talk to who knows about normal treatments for lyme disease. I think I may have already taken enough (13 days of 100 mg of doxycycline 2x/day). Post phone numbers for any country in comments.
How many antibiotics am I allergic to? What do I take when I get an infection, if I’m allergic to everything? Is it something in my house that I don’t know about? So far, not as bad as yesterday. meh
[Edit: 6:24 pm: bah. “For early-stage Lyme arthritis, oral doxycycline or amoxicillin is usually given for 4 to 6 weeks.” http://health.yahoo.com/ency/healthwise/hw74158]
Tags: Lyme Disease, Celesteh

Went back to the doctor. She acted disbelieving when I told her I had an allergy. And disbelieving when I told her I had lyme disease. (“What did the blood test say?” it doesn’t fucking matter, I have all the symptoms, give me drugs!) Then finally, she gave me 150 mg of Roxithromycine (english: Roxithromycin) twice a day for 3 more weeks.

Three more weeks??!!?
Nicole has read that some doctors only give doxycyline for 10 days for early stage lyme. Maybe I’m already cured. Except the muscle above my bite still hurts off and on and really, I don’t want to take any chances with this thing.
Let the count down to allergy begin. I blame the dermatologist my mother dragged me to in high school. Dear Upper middle class kids and parents, Teenagers are supposed to have zits. Giving young teens low doses of antibiotics every day for years is not good for them and may have repercussions in later life.
I went to the same pharmacy to buy the pills. The pharmacist said, “oh the allergy came back?” Yes, it came back! (I know, I know. But it’s close to my house and I’m not again asking for advice.) I have very little confidence in either the drug, the doctor or the pharmacist right now. It’s just like home.
Tags: Lyme Disease, Celesteh

Yeah, if your antibiotic gives you a rash, you STOP TAKING IT. You do not just take allergy medecine and keep swallowing the anitbiotic. Why? Because the reaction gets much worse every time. To the point where you could still be taking allergy medecine AND have an itchy red rash and a phlegmy throat and there’s nothing else you can take for the itchy burning what’s-wrong-with-my-throat.

I have lost faith in my pharmacist(s). I appreciated him because he gave me advice about my tick bite. I was annoyed when the advice turned out to be wrong (“wait until monday” meant arthritis on Tuesday. meh.) I loved her when she sold me something to make my stomach feel less terrible. I fell head over heels (well, not really) when she gave me something for the rash, the first time. Except that she told me to keep taking the antibiotic. I showed up at the pharmacy early in the day, that time. I could have gone to the Hôpital right then, even on a Saturday. The Zirban-ish French drug would have controlled the rash. But no, she lead me wrong and now I am itchy and alarmed and will have to get up early in the morning and go to the Hôpital and the lyme disease thingees might regroup during the night and launch a counter-offensive.
I am now looking for a new pharmacy.
The American Hospital of Paris gives telephone advice to inhabitants of the Ile-de-France. Their number is 01 46 41 2525. A bilingual person answers the phone. I had to call back twice because of phone glitches, however, I ended up speaking with an American doctor, I think possibly in America, because she knew my allergy medecine by it’s American brand name. She told me that if I can’t breath or pass out that I need to go to a hospital and that the peak allergic reaction usually lasts an hour and a half, so I’ve got maybe 40 minutes of itching and dry-throat paranoia to go. (my god it feels dry and weird, hopefully it won’t close up.)
Pharmacists here are so willing to dispense medical advice that I just assumed they must be qualified to do so. When you make an ASSUMPTION, you make an ASS out of U and MPTION.
Tags: Paris, Allergies, Celesteh

It’s like a sine wave, that’s heading towards heathy. Which is to say, up and down, but headed up. I still have some pain off and on in the leg that got bit, occasional muscle soreness, and the rash varies from invisible to alarmingly red. I’m still more tired than normal, but in the last 3 days, my outdoor ventures have not left me feeling anything other than happy. Good timing, as Brother Bob arrived today.

Most of my problems now are from the antibiotic. Most people who take it have stomach problems, myself included. My pharmacist sold me strange pink pills which treat stomach cramps and “spasms of the uterus.” ooo-kay. She also sold me biphidous, which is some bacteria which is supposed to live in your body and which antibiotics tend to murder.
I have just been taking the biphidous and the antibiotic because yesterday I got an allergy to something. The pharmacist thinks it’s the antibiotic, but I’ve been taking it for 2 weeks and the pink pills for only 2 days and I just bought new soap. So she sold me allergy medicine. 3 pills to treat the side effects of the one pill. If I don’t turn pink and itchy tomorrow, then it’s the pink stuff or the soap. If I do, I’m allergic to the two major kinds of antibiotics. Only one more week of it. I can’t wait. It really makes me feel sick. At least it’s only twice a day. I do most of my eating right before I have to take it again. I am alarmingly thin.
In other news, I lost my nose ring in the shower today. I’ve been having very mixed luck. Everything is going screwy in France, but my California persona, who maybe lives there without me, has been offered gigs and kind words about my work.
[Edit 20:28: Augh, my front torso, neck and face are red and itchy!! I know God isn’t testing my faith, because I don’t have any. I already took an allergy pill. It’s Sunday night. So I take another doxycycline and wait till morning to find somebody to whine to?]
Tag: Celesteh

Here, I will present information that I used to prepare for my trip and things I wish I had done / known. This is Chapter 1.

Advance Preparations

Call up the Cité Internationale des Arts and ask about housing. Do this as soon as you know that you are coming. If you are two late to apply for the start of your stay, apply to get housing for the second half. This housing is probably cheaper than what you would otherwise find and it gives you access to the art scene, including a performance space. It is really hard to get gigs in Paris and very few people have heard of CCMIX. Being in the Cité des Internationale Arts will help you out.
Learn as much French as you can. Take French classes at your school, at Alliance Française or in summer school. The 2-semesters-at-once summer class at UC Berkeley is the cheapest option for a Californian. Also, the teacher and TA will help you with your paperwork for a visa.
Get a visa. The school tells you not to worry about visas. None of their students have been deported ever. The anti-immigration hysteria is not about Americans. However, getting a visa may be worthwhile for a few reasons: 1. If you are age 26 or under, the French government will give you money. 2. If you ever want to return, you won’t be faced with the choice of lying or admitting you’ve been in the country illegally. 3. The paperwork will help you buy a cell phone and open a bank account and things like that. You must go to the consulate in person to get a visa. Call them for more info. In the morning. It may be that you only need to appear in person once.
Tell everyone you know that you are coming to Paris for the year and then ask them if they know anybody there. Get phone numbers and email addresses. Call those people as soon as you arrive and arrange to have a drink with them or something. Meeting people in Paris is difficult and making friends takes a long time. Get started quickly.
If you want an apartment to yourself, Craig’s List Paris can be a good place to find one, as can FUSAC. Having a housemate, however, will help you meet people and will be cheaper. If I were coming by myself and I didn’t get a spot in the cité, I would stay in the CCMIX apartments and look for a housemate once I arrived.
If you like to read about things before doing them, French or Foe has good advice about cultural differences. The philosophy seems to be right, but unfortunately many of the specifics are outdated. The author is right when she says not to bring wine to a dinner party, but (probably) wrong when she says not to go to the bathroom at somebody else’s house. I say “probably,” assuming you’re not going to be dining with any high government officials or anybody’s formal grandmother.
This list is not exhaustive. Obviously, you must also do things like gather paperwork. If you think I left anything out, please leave it in the comments. More advice about other aspects is coming in later posts!Tags: Paris, CCMIX, Celesteh

Anti-Algerian bias has been in the news recently, what with the world cup scandal. In case you don’t follow football, what happened is this: during the world cup final, the captain of the French team, Zidane, headbutted Materazzi, an Italian player, during overtime and got thrown out of the match. Allegations have come up that Materazzi called Zidane “the son of a terrorist whore.” Zidane’s mother is an Algerian immigrant to France who was sick in the hospital at the time of the match. Italy went on to win the match in penalty shootouts. Zidane has never missed a penalty kick and so some suspect that France might have won had he stayed in the match.

Allegations that Italy won through racism must be going down very poorly at home, right? Well, not exactly. According to the NYT:

Swastikas spray painted in Rome’s ancient Jewish ghetto sullied Italy’s joy after its World Cup victory on Sunday, as did racial comments made by a former government minister about the French team.

The former minister in question is Roberto Calderoli, the guy who was forced to resign after appearing publicly wearing a T-shit with one of the Mohammed cartoons on it.

After the Cup victory he said that the Italians had vanquished a French team that was comprised of “Negroes, communists and Moslems.” Italian soccer is no stranger to extremist politics. Italian football matches are often used as a platform for far-right fans to express racist sentiments.

Well, at the very least, in the enlightened and noble United states, anti-Algerian sentiments are, well, foreign, right? Let’s ask the San Francisco Chronicle.

No one should ever take Zidane for a peaceful man. The son of Algerian immigrants, he comes from the hard streets of Marseilles, a truly rough-and-tumble background.

He’s not peaceful because . . . he’s the son of Algerian immigrants? Oh, and he’s from Marseilles.
In other news, I read a web comic called Shooting War. The comic is kind of fucked, but it takes place in the Not Too Distant Future (one of my favorite time periods), in Iraq. and then I read this panel. The plot at this point is that the main characters have just been attacked by insurgents carrying forged Iranian passports. The female character notes that the ring leader looks as if he is North African and is wearing a T shirt from the banlieues of Paris. I won’t quote all the dialog for you (it’s in the image I linked to and you can’t cut and paste from images), but I will pull it apart for your benefit.
She did not live in the northern suburbs when she was a university student. Teachers live in the burbs. Students live in the left bank. It’s important for students to be near university life and they get something called the CAF from the government to pay their living expenses. All students get this, foreign or not. This system is extremely unlikely to change in the near future.
This travel agency thing she speaks of does not exist. There are French soldiers in Afghanistan. Given the timing of the comic, she would be in university now. Would the French happily send extremists off to kill their own troops? No they would not. Happiness about extremism does not exist.
Burning precious Pugeots! Oooh, somebody read a newspaper in November! But not very carefully, because only like 5 cars were burned in Paris, the rest were in the burbs. The cars burned in Paris were around the Place de la Republique. One may have been on my street. That’s an immigrant neighborhood. They weren’t burning cars out in the 16th. Also, the word “Peugeot” sounds effeminate, right? Because all French men are pansies, not like us tough Americans who go fight imperialist wars in Iraq. Maybe the writer couldn’t think of any other French car brands. Maybe, in the future, there are no more Renaults.
Pissed off suburban youth are angry about economic issues, not religious issues. It may be the case that in the future, that changes. But right now, they’re angry about job discrimination more than anything else. France has an extremely secular society. These kids are French. They were born in France. They went to French schools. Even the “native” French see them as French. The kind of changes this future envisions might happen, but I don’t see it as likely. Especially not a toleration for terrorist travel agencies.
This poorly-written dialog, of course, comes from the same place as the stuff Materazzi allegedly said to Zidane. This stereotyping about Algerian terrorists is everywhere in the media. If you kept hearing that over and over again, this hate speech, it becomes like a physical attack. Zidane told reporters he would rather take a blow to the face than hear what Materazzi said to him. Hate speech is violent. “Sticks and stones” is bullshit, and everybody knows it. This has got to stop.
Tags: Football, Celesteh

According to the Washington Post, the US has decided to apply the Geneva Conventions to all detainees. File this under “it’s about damn time.” Even CIA black sites and secret gulags will have to follow the Geneva Conventions, and I’m sure that everyone will be properly informed and they will act in full accordance with the law, because if there’s one thing the CIA has a reputation for, it’s legality and more importantly, transparency, so that interested parties can verify that they are indeed following the law.

(Speaking of proper information, guys in the field in Afghanistan, when asking how to treat detainees, were given rescinded torture-ahoy! memos intended for Guantanamo Bay. So decisions on the top only matter as far as they get out to people actually handling detainees. Link 1, Link 2)
The Bush administration continues to insist that torturing people into giving false confessions makes voters feel hopeful about the war on terror, but the Supreme Court apparently remembers that we have laws and treaty obligations and stuff.
The WaPo article does not mention extraordinary rendition, a practice in which we turn over wrongly grabbed innocent suspects to other allied countries known to use torture after the very solemnly promise (wink) not to torture these particular suspects. Then they share all the false, i’ll-say-whatever-you-want,-just-stop-it information with our intelligence agencies, who use it to grab more innocent people who were randomly named as the last guy sought desperately to make it stop suspects. One thinks the Geneva Conventions and Jesus would disallow such a thing, but since the Supreme Court didn’t rule on it (and how could they since it’s secret?) and nobody is talking about it now, it will probably continue.
This is a small step. Very positive. But too small by itself.
Tag: Celesteh

The day after I went to see the movie, I woke up early the next morning to call the Netherlands consulate in Paris to ask about immigration procedure. Apparently, if you’re American and want to move to the the Netherlands, you just show up with paperwork and ask for a residency permit. Then convince somebody to giv e you a job and show up with some paperwork around that and they give you work papers. Maybe, probably if they like you.

lyme disease update

And the, the over-exertion of walking around Paris and then waking up early had me feeling miserable in bed for two days. At some point, taking 1 gram of fizzy tylenol at a time started doing me harm. And so I stopped and began to feel better. Yesterday I felt fine, except for getting tired really fast. Only occasionally tiny amount of burning and the bite hurts from time to time, but not so much that I would probably even notice it if it weren’t so suddenly important in my life. The red spot around it shrank and faded and got really dry and then I stopped putting the antiseptic on it because it was so dry. The doctor gave me something that smells like pool water. I think it’s chlorine. And last night, I noticed it looked the same as it did a week ago. ack. So I bleached it and this morning, it’s light again.

I’m up early because I was worrying about the implications of the rash not going away and had plans to call an anglophone advice line. What if I have antibiotic resistant lyme disease? But commenters on Live Journal have said they had the rash for two weeks. So I’ll wait a few more days before seeking advice. I don’t want to spend another four hours at the hospital waiting to talk to a dermatologist unless I actually have to. What did we do before the internets?
I want to be travelling right now, but if I get completely exhausted after just riding my bike downtown, then it is not in the cards for me. I’m really tired of not feeling well. I want this to go away. Hence my worry about the rash. “Why isn’t this gone yet??” I whined to myself. My problems are minor compared to many folks, but they’re mine and that gives them a certain gravity in my mind.
Tags: Lyme, Lyme Disease, Celesteh