Oh my word, the drummers have finally left and I can’t tell you how excited I am… actually I think a few cymbals were mixed in there too.

Yes in fact this started along with the fever, aching, and just down right sickness what seems like a month ago, but really has been close to two weeks. I can’t even remember the last time I have been this sick… The worst part was the pounding head which felt like everything and I mean everything was going to explode. I am not even joking about this part.

I am in Lucca, Italy right now with the national team, who is off racing all over Europe, while I am hanging out inside mostly on a couch watching a lot of sword fighting, water polo, even pool, and when I am lucky a bike race will be on. Other then that I just sleep and sleep some more, that is now. A week ago at this time I couldn’t even sleep because I felt so bad… This only meant one thing. Phil wasn’t sleeping either. Thank goodness he is here… I am not sure what I would have done without him in a foreign country feeling like eight hippos ran over the top of me…

It has been a crazy couple of weeks… I can’t even remember the last time I went to the hospital and I have visited it two times and been to the Doctor’s once in the last week or so. And let me tell you… Each time has been an adventure. They, being the Doctors, are all super nice but we don’t really understand each other so the visits mostly consist of a lot of finger pointing. Lucky for me they let me use my cell phone in the Italy hospitals so I am able to call Phil (he was gone for all the hospital adventures) to translate.

In fact after the second visit and the pain meds had kicked in I was able to use my skype phone while I waited to get an MRI on my head. I am pretty sure they were worried my brain was so big and powerful (hence the pain), but I might have lost some of the words in translation so can’t be 100% sure that is what they were worried about. Mostly I heard “???? Amercano ?????” , the question marks noting what I did not understand, followed by the one word I did understand, followed by more words I did not understand…

Needless to say without Phil I am not sure what would have come of me. Jim and the girls have been super nice too! Lauren and Carmen adventured with me to the hospital for the first visit. This was very nice considering they were leaving for Belgium the next day…

In fact if you haven’t heard, which I am sure you have, Kristin Armstrong is kicking butt over here. She won a race last weekend and got 2nd in Flanders. Also, Lauren got 6th in the 1.1 race yesterday. Carmen, Alison, Brooke (who had the stomach bug), and Megan have been racing strong too! And Emily, who raced with the girls last weekend, is racing now in France with Melissa I am sure kicking butt.

And before any of this happened…

Phil and I were living in the Fanni castle here in Lucca. In fact I have been looking for the dragon that must live in the castle but have not been able to find him. A touch bummed because it would be great if he could warm up our room on the chilly mornings. However, we have replaced out propane heater with and electrical heater and all is good now… Like him, being the dragon, I would be sleeping right now while it is still raining and a touch chilly out.

On Tuesday I am off to the states to make sure I am all better and get ready for the rest of the season. I am a little bummed, but I know it is something I should really do. So I will be in Bend until I adventure back across the Atlantic to race L’Aude in the middle of May. Then I am back to the US for Philly, Nature Valley, and the Austin Crit. After that I will be back to Europe for some more racing.

Well, now I should go see if more sword fighting is on TV. Living in a castle you never know who you may have to fight off and like I said I haven’t seen any dragon so someones got to be ready.

:)Chrissy

ps… I am all cooped up, but lucky for me in a nice place. We have been staying at the SRM place which has been nice. But I have not really been outside in a long time. Soon though, soon. I am just happy the drummers have departed from my head and I am starting to feel better.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 11th, 2008 at 8:34 am and is filed under bike stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.