Cairo, the 21st November, 2009

“System crash”

All machines crash, even the best ones. Computer experts know it too well.
I am very far from being a computer expert but I do know that, when overcharged, PCs as well as people DO crash.
As much as I like to think of myself as a Super Woman in charge of my world, I am often reminded that I am just human (whom would guess?!).

This morning I woke up in the most compromising position: laying down on my bathroom floor. How did I get there?! Well…that’s another story.

STEP 1: Came from work yesterday night extremely tired and still working on some new ideas, new cloths and “MUST DOS” for what’s next.

STEP 2: Not in the mood to cook, I decided to order my dinner from the vast possibility of choices available in Cairo. You can have everything delivered at your home in this town. Mostly lazy people combined with a nightmare traffic and messy public spaces have build an enormous community of “delivery lovers”. You can have pampers delivered at your door, food, prostitutes, plants, toys, books, vibrators (oh, no...not vibrators!Well...not that I know of...:) , you name it…you can even have a tremendous sickness delivered at your door without even requesting it.
This is the official Delivery Town.

STEP3: I ate my dinner. Took a shower, browsed the net for a little while and fell asleep like an angel only to wake up in the middle of the night throwing up my guts.

STEP4: I spent the whole night throwing up my dinner and, I guess by the look and feel of it, all my past dinners that were not digested. I didn’t know a single human being could throw up this much. The human body is always surprising me.

STEP 5: I threw up for the 10000th time, prepared to return to bed and started to see the bathroom walls moving around my head and my legs failing to hold themselves.
“Ohhhhh, boy!”

STEP 6: There was a space of time I cannot define between the failing legs and me waking up on the bathroom floor asking myself what’s my name and where am I.
The first thing that came to my mind was: “What about my work?! Who will dance tonight?!”

STEP 7: I realized I had fainted and managed to get up and head to bed mobilizing some friends to come and help and the responsibility of assuring someone would cover for me at work tonight. I knew I couldn’t move. Much less dance like a crazy person, as I always do.

STEP 8: Going to a hospital in Cairo. Waw!
This is a hard one to even remember. Every hospitals give me the creeps. I am anti-doctor, anti hospital, anti disease. I enter in a regular hospital as if I was entering a dark cave where I will certainly be eaten by a mongrel.
Now…if you talk about a regular, public hospital in Cairo, the scare grows considerably. Crowds of people more or less treated as cattle, doctors who come and go as they please without order and the sensation of nausea that comes with the smell of these places.
I started seeing the walls of the hospital going round and round and feared I would faint again in the middle of all these strangers. I looked at the marble floor and imagined my face stomping on it hard as it happened in my bathroom in the morning. How can I perform if I hurt my face?!
This was all I thought about.

STEP 9: Courtesy of a nurse who made me pass ahead of a huge line of patients waiting for their turn (being a foreigner makes a difference in these situations, we’re usually taken in consideration more than Egyptians which is a mistake in itself but I was in no condition to argue).
I felt bad and ashamed for allowing myself to just go ahead without consideration for the already waiting people but my health state was so scary that I put my own conscience to rest for a while. No time to be a humanist right now!

STEP 10: Taking heavy medication in order to recuperate fast and eating a terrible soup of rice and carrots advised by my mum as the best remedy for my current state.
Oh, I am also allowed to eat apples. YES!
Praying really hard for me to recover during the night so I am able to do a great job tomorrow. Cancelling another night of work is out of the question.
Asking all the guardian angels to intervene.

STEP 11: Acknowledging that I am a human being and not a super woman and that even my strong system has to crash, once in a while, in order to purify and rebuild itself from the inside out.
I am not a Super Woman after all?!
That sucks!