Florida, part III

Saturday morning arrived way too soon for me. I went down for breakfast at 8am while Ryan was able to sleep in - lucky! Breakfast looked good but I still couldn't taste - though I was feeling a bit better. They had a breakfast buffet set up with mini-waffles shaped like Mickey Mouse, breakfast burritos, fruit, and many types of pastries in addition to coffee, tea, orange juice, and water. I had some waffles, fruit, and hot tea.

At about 9am, we boarded a bus to begin our training. The training was through Disney University. We got to see some neat backstage areas of the park (which I won't talk about for fear of being sued by Disney). Very cool, though. They took us back to the hotel around 1pm where I earned a cool Mickey graduate pin for completing the course and also picked up a copy of our group photo from the night before. I was starting to feel a bit worse.

Ryan and I walked toward Epcot when it got closer to 2pm. We picked up our tickets at Will Call and entered the park through a back entrance from the resort (not the traditional "golf ball" Spaceship Earth entrance). We took a right and were in France. It was beautiful! And also verrrrrrry crowded. The Epcot Food and Wine festival was happening and seemed to bring in a ton of people, most of whom had plastic glasses of wine or beer in their hands. None for me as I was sick. From France we went to...I don't know, Morocco? It was somewhere that had a restaurant with the freaky spotted meat on a stick like at Daphne's Greek restaurant. We avoided that.place.

We ambled past some additional countries and then hit Japan. Let me just say that Japan had the best store and the best "stuff" of any of the countries. We went through the store in our search for food and then saw that there was a restaurant next door. I don't remember what is what called but Ryan waited in line for FOREVER to get us both teriyaki chicken. It seemed good enough. Over lunch, I told Ryan that I was feeling awful and asked if we could go to the doctor later, after we were done walking around Epcot. Ryan, of course, wanted to leave the park and take me to the doctor which made me feel bad. We made our way to a Disney cast member and asked if there was a first aid station. She told us how to get there and it was literally halfway around the world from where we were. We walked through Germany, Africa, China, Mexico and many other countries. The first aid station was near Mexico.

Inside first aid, we explained my situation and the first aid lady offered to call an urgent medical center for us. We figured that would be a good plan, and they were sending a van from the center to pick us up. They'd also bring us back to the park or our hotel. Sweet! The driver arrived in about 15 minutes. In the meantime we were treated to a play of "This is what's wrong with your generation" by a mother and daughter. It was pretty exciting to watch.

Anyway, the dude in the van picked us up and took us to Centra Care. On the way, he gave us paperwork to fill out. Since Ryan was the one who more than likely got me sick, we decided that he should see the doctor as well. When we got to the facility we turned in our paperwork, only to receive more. Before bothering to fill it out, I decided to use the bathroom and cough and sneeze some more in semi-privacy. While washing my hands, I noticed a bulletin for those seeking help from spousal abuse. It had phone numbers on pull tabs and gave the instructions to "put the numbers in your shoe" so that they wouldn't be found. I was reminded once again how lucky I am.

I went back and filled out my paperwork. Ryan used the men's restroom and came back to ask if the women's had a note about spousal abuse. At least they didn't discriminate.

After...I don't know, I fell asleep...I was called into what looked like an ER or something. It was a huge room with cloth dividers so that about six patients could be seen separately. They took my blood pressure and my temperature and told me to wait for the doctor. I laid down on my little cot and closed my eyes. Ten minutes later I could hear Ryan in another part of the room. He was talking to a nurse who soon found out that I was in there and hadn't asked to be seen with Ryan. She started joking around like I didn't want to claim him and stuff. *Sigh* She moved him to the empty "room" next to mine.

A few moments later the doctor came in to see us. We told her what was going on and she listened to my breathing. Then she had a nurse bring in a "bronchial dilator" (I think - I may be making that up). I was to use this device to breathe for 10 minutes. It would help expand my lungs so that I could breathe properly and it would help the medicine work.Seemed to do the trick - I soon started coughing out more junk. Yippee!

After my time on the machine was done, we went to the pharmacy in back of the building to fill our prescriptions and get some other things (hand sanitizer, cough drops, etc.). We were promptly told that the pharmacy didn't accept insurance. Not ours specifically - ANY insurance. "Who in the world doesn't accept insurance?" I wondered. Well, apparently not Turner Drugs in Orlando. Oh well - they told us how much it would be and it wasn't that bad so we just went for it. After we filled our prescriptions and purchased everything, we got another shuttle back to our hotel.

...well, almost our hotel. The driver actually dropped us off at the Yacht Club Resort instead of the Boardwalk Resort. We had to walk through the hotel, outside, and around to the other side of the boardwalk. Which, normally, would be no big deal but it was hard to breathe when I was just sitting, let along walking. Anyway, we got back to the hotel and I just wanted to rest. I took my meds and did just that. Ryan decided he wanted to go back to Epcot, so he did.

Fast forward to 8:30pm-ish. Ryan got back to the hotel room and told me he had a surprise for me. He made me close my eyes and put a miniature, stuffed Darth Vader in my hand. He's so cute! His head's wayyy too big which adds to the cuteness. Then Ryan told me he had another surprise. He gave me a piece of paper with a number on it. Obviously, I had no idea what that meant. He told me that he went to guest services and told them what had happened to us today. And since we had checked in with first aid, they were going to give us tickets for the following day! Very cool.

Instead of trying to go out, we decided to order room service. We got two cheeseburgers, one with fruit and one with fries, a piece of chocolate cake, and an order of hot herbal tea. Mmmmmm! All I tasted of the burger were the sensations "grilled" and "mustard". That was about all I tasted. I let Ryan have nearly all the cake because what's the sense of having chocolate if you can't taste it anyway? After dinner I took more medications and thanked my lucky stars that I didn't have to get up early the next day!