Sick In Sweden
You Know you’re Sick when…
My mom has said it jokingly before, that a good way to tell if I’m really sick, is to see whether I am knitting or not. For a couple of days on this recent trip to Sweden, it was that bad. I’ve share about the trip in the past two blog posts so I won’t go too far into the details about the trip in this post.
On the last night of our conference, I started feeling stiff and sore, and really tired. At first I thought it was the jet lag and lack of sleep from being in a different time zone catching up with me, but when I started getting a sore throat I knew it was a different story. To make things worse, I had left the Airborne that I brought with me, back at my hosts house (not that it would have been some miracle cure but a good dose of Vitamin C wouldn’t have hurt at all). At this point, I said good night to my colleagues and went to bed…or tried to.
The Swedish have a 5-15 minute coffee break throughout the day where you stop working and socialize with your co-workers over coffee. This is called a Fika. When I’m back home in The States, we jokingly have virtual fikas. Well I joined them in their partaking of coffee earlier that afternoon and despite taking Benadryl that evening, I could not fall asleep. And then, in the early morning when I did, I woke from the pain in my shoulders from being achy and sitting over a table all day.
The next day we packed and waited for a bus to take us back to Linköping – but it was late due to snow, so we sat outside/in a wind shelter for a bit and waited. By the time the bus came, I was falling asleep. My host was also starting to feel a bit run down so we called it a day and I literally crawled into bed when we got back to her house. It was about 5/6pm. I face-timed my mom and caught up with my doctor of a brother for a bit and then fell asleep around 7pm. Which was good because I think it helped me kick whatever I had. Over the weekend, with rest and staying hydrated, I felt better and no longer sick in Sweden. It was some kind of flu that has been going around. In the week that I’ve been here, all three of us have it. My brother and others back at home have had it too. And I’m not sure if it was fake news or not but I saw an article that this has been the worst year for the flu – so please do not take it as a joke. Stay home, get well and don’t infect others, even if you feel “Okay”.
I also learned, that when you’re sick in Sweden, you really don’t take over the counter meds here in Sweden, you just take a sick day and get better – which is possible because you are paid for your sick time and it doesn’t count against your paid time off or vacation days. This is something US companies need to start doing big time – I could also start talking about their year long maternity leaves but I’ll save that for another post.
Its Sunday evening and I’m going to bed, a few hours before the big game back home to prep for a busy next three days full of working on things that came out of our conference before coming home on Thursday. Hope you all have a safe and happy evening – even if you’re team isn’t playing, and if you’re from Pittsburgh like me, one of these teams wins (because neither are loves of ours).
PS. Now that I’m on the mend, I’ve picked my knitting back up and am making really good progress on my knitting shawl – which I am confident in my ability to say, it will be finished by the wedding. My maid of honor’s shawl is another story and another post that will follow shortly.
And Swedish homes have loverly places to knit:
The house in which I am staying is beautiful and my photos cannot really do it justice – whether you’re sick or not the beautiful wooden floors, tall ceilings, crown molding, plaster designs around the chandeliers, the old built-in round tiled fireplaces and all of the amazing history (including an old castle like building next door), is just so much to take in. It’s like a fantasy land or stepping back in time. This farm has had the same borders, since the 1500s. Guys, that’s before we even existed as a country…Oh and it has a vault, like a real bank vault, built into the walls of the house.
