Written Saturday, June 04, 2005 @ 10:08pmI’m glad I’m an optimist. I’m glad that I look for the good in situations. I’m glad that I take every experience as something to learn from. I’m glad that I think everything happens for a reason. I’m glad that I can enjoy anything. I’m glad that I’m naïve.
The history:
Wednesday, May 11th, 2005:
During the afternoon, I notice that my inner right ankle is swollen. I don’t really think much of it, because it doesn’t hurt or anything, but it’s weird that it’s so swollen…also, that I can’t figure out why it’s swollen. I mean, I didn’t twist it, at least I didn’t remember doing anything weird to it, but it’s me, and I’m always doing weird things to my feet. Well, as time goes on, it still remains swollen and it actually starting to hurt a bit, but still I think nothing of it, and that I’ll just take care of it that evening and then it would disappear the following day.
That evening, I feel exhausted, and my ankle is really starting to hurt. I go downstairs to put in a load of laundry and have to hobble a little bit to get there. Oh well. Back in my apartment, I’m quite tired, so I decide to take a nap while my laundry’s being done. Skipping dinner, I go to bed and a couple hours later, I wake up to quite a lot of pain in my ankle and thinking that I should go get my laundry. I try to stand up, but my exhaustion and pain is just too much. I decide that I can leave the laundry until the next morning and I drag myself to get a drink because I’m so thirsty. I’m limping horribly. I return to bed and hope for a much better scenario the next morning.
Thursday, May 12th, 2005
In the wee hours of the morning (or maybe super late the night prior), I had to hobble to the bathroom, and moments later I woke up from a most comfortable slumber, only my bed seemed a lot harder than usual. Turns out I was comfortably lying on my back on the bathroom floor. Using a towel to cover me like a blanket. I was obviously confused about how I got there (you may jump to the conclusion that I fainted - but I refuse to believe it), and was actually seriously contemplating staying there for the night because I was so comfortable, but I thought it would be wise for me to head back to my bed because I probably wouldn’t be able to hear my alarm clock from the bathroom floor and then I wouldn’t be able to make it to work on time.
I wake up to my alarm clock and need to get downstairs to get my laundry. I’m really hobbling, but I have to get my laundry because it’s someone else’s day now and I’m got to clear out my stuff. I guess I wasn’t paying much attention to what I was doing the night prior, because I didn’t close the lid where the detergent goes in and so I couldn’t open the door to get my clothes out of the machine (later that day, it turns out that not closing the lid mean that the wash cycle cannot be complete and so there’s still water in the machine and that’s why the door wouldn’t open). I decide to leave the machine for now and go to get my laundry that is hanging on the clothes lines. It’s really early in the morning (I need a lot of sleep), so I’m pretty tired still and don’t have very much energy to reach up and take my laundry off of the lines. I can pull off the clothes that aren’t attached with clothespins, but the ones that are, I can’t seem to muster the energy to reach the pins. I feel really tired, and actually decide to lie down on the floor and close my eyes for awhile. After a few short moments, I decide that I should maybe go back to my apartment and lie down there, because a) someone might come and see me lying on the floor of the laundry room, and b) there’s probably something wrong with me if I need to lie on the laundry room floor.
As I make my way up the four flights of stair to my apartment, everything starts going black. I blindly make it to my apartment and go straight back to bed. After a few moments of lying there, I realize that I probably can’t walk to the bus stop to get to school. I make a couple calls, and it’s decided that I will be picked up and taken to the hospital. I won’t be heading to work this morning. I go back to bed and wait for my ride to arrive.
I wake up to the doorbell, and hobble to the door and greet the neighbour whose laundry day it is. She tells me that I need to get my stuff out of the room, and I deliriously tell her my predicament and how I just can’t seem to get the machine door open. Since neither of us realize what’s actually wrong with the machine, we think it’s broken and the lady will wait until later that day to talk to the concierge about fixing the machine. So I feel horrible that she can’t do her laundry, but I head back to bed.
My ride arrives and come in to see me (I left my door unlocked for her). She’s brought me crutches, which actually make everything worse, because my balance seems so completely off on this day. I’d rather hobble and hold onto the wall. When I get to the top of the stairs, I really feel like I need to sit down. It’s decided that I shouldn’t try to walk downstairs, and that I will have to miss my doctor’s appointment. As I sit leaning against the wall completely exhausted, my ride calls work to see if two of my male colleagues can come and help me down the stairs. After waiting, I hear another female colleague’s voice coming up the stairs. To my horror, almost in slow motion, I see the faces and hear the voices of two students from my school. I am horribly embarrassed. I feel horrible. I look horrible. Now, two of my students have to carry me down four flights of stairs. They’re two of the nicest boys, and try to make me feel better and crack jokes, but I’m too embarrassed. I thank them profusely, and ease myself into the car to be driven to the hospital.
Once at the hospital, I’m taken on a wheelchair into emergency.
Continued writing on Wednesday, October 12, 2005Four months later, and I think I’d ready to finish writing about my experience. Not only do I feel like I’ve completely recovered from the experience (sauf the little scars I have – not emotional ones, I just mean physical ones) and I think I might actually be a little bit closer to being caught up on my blog and have a little bit of time to sit down and type a little bit about the experience once again. (I’m concerned that if I put it off much longer I’ll forget about little details that happened.) I really had difficulty writing about this experience for some reason. As positive as I feel about it, for some reason, at the time, while I was recouperating, it was really difficult to re-live what had happened.
…I get settled in a room and a doctor comes to look at me. We chat for a bit (en Francais, bien sur!) and turns out that he’s originally from Canada. As we’re chatting, he’s measuring various things, examining my ankle, taking my temperature…hmmm…a nice 39.5 degrees. Well, since I’m so used to hearing about body temperatures in Fahrenheit, this news means nothing to me (except for after he tells me that I have a fever and that 37 is a normal temperature, but 2.5 degrees isn't much right?!? -- the reasction of my friends told me that I was wrong). So he decides to hook me up to an IV to get me cooled down a bit. They’d like to take a blood test too, because they’re not too sure about what’s going on. My white blood cell count is a little high, but they figure it’s the fever/sickness. Nothing alarming. They ask me about my ankle. I tell them that I haven’t done anything to hurt the actual ankle itself, and they notice the scar on my blisters on my insteps and wonder about that. I tell that them a couple weeks ago I had pretty bad blisters from playing ultimate frisbee in England, but they seem to have healed up by now. They’ve just left some scars. Blisters aren’t anything new. I was a dancer. Blisters don’t scare me. They
scar me, but they don’t
scare me.
Anyway, I’m coughing pretty badly (but of course that’s not a big deal, because I’ve had this cough for awhile, and coughs eventually go away on their own, right?), so the doctor wonders if maybe I’ve got a lung infection or something. The doctors really aren’t sure what’s wrong with me at this point, but they decide to continue with a string of tests because it seems my fever is a smidge higher than it should be.
I get wheeled into the x-ray room. They would like to take x-rays of my ankle to see if in fact there’s something broken (but I just didn’t know it had happened) or if there’s anything else that they can detect that isn’t normal. They also wanted to take x-rays of my chest because my horrible cough was concerning them. I was nice and comfy lying on the bed of the ankle x-ray, and then they asked if I could stand up for the chest x-ray. So, I stood up and everything seemed to go black, so I mentioned to the technician that I felt a little weak. He asked if I could stand for just a little bit, and that he’d take the picture quick, and I said sure. I felt a little weak, but I stood up long enough for the picture to be taken and then I lay back down on the bed afterwards. It was such a relief just lying on the bed. It was a strange sensation, because anytime I was being spoken to by the doctor/nurses/anyone else, I felt completely fine. I could carry on conversations (in French too – meaning that I had to really concentrate), but as soon as they left the room, I was very happy to just close my eyes for a little while until they returned (when I would become very alert again). Anyway, the technician asked if I could stand up again, because he needed to take another x-ray. Sure, no problem. I felt a lot stronger this time around, so I stood up. The strange thing was, that I remember sitting back down soon afterwards and it was like I wasn’t in my body anymore and that my body was shaking, even though my brain wasn’t telling it to. And even more odd was that my brain felt like it was in complete control and that there was nothing wrong, because when the technician asked if I was alright, I vividly remember telling him the honest truth in that I really was feeling fine, but I just didn’t understand why my body was shaking so much. He looked really concerned, but asked me one more time, if I could stand up. I stood up again, holding on to the machine, honestly feeling fine, actually a lot stronger than the first time I stood up, no blacking out or anything (I think maybe though I was keeping my eyes closed to concentrate and conserve energy), but the next thing I remember was that…
It is now Thursday, October 13, 2005…I was lying on the bed and a nurse walking away from me and the technician talking on the phone to someone else (couldn’t hear the conversation, but I presume it was about me). I think that *maybe* I fainted. (You can probably tell by now that I think I'm invinsible.) Anyway, the technician figured out a way to get the x-ray that he needed while I was lying down. Much easier for me.
I was feeling pretty tired I guess.
After the x-rays, I was wheeled up to another floor to get some ultrasounds done. I haven’t had an ultrasound in awhile, but they’re cool. The super cold jelly stuff they put on you and then you see this cool picture on the screen. I’m all for seeing what they’re doing and seeing the inners on my body. I mean, I don’t get to see the insides of my body on a regular basis, so I might as well make the most out of the chances that I’ve got. I got an ultrasound of my whole right leg. Not just around the ankle, but all the way up along the inside of my leg. From the discussion, I think all that they could see was that my veins were a little bit enlarged, but they didn’t think anything of it.
Back down I went to the emergency clinic (by the way, I still had this annoying IV stuck in me) and waited. I don’t think that they released me until 6:30pm-ish. So a whole day spent in the hospital. They released me because they couldn’t find anything wrong with me, and that my temperature had gone down to 38.something with the IV. They gave me prescriptions for antibiotics, pain killers, anti-inflammatories and a stomach calmer. Let me explain. Up until this point, I thought I was allergic to amoxicillin. I vividly recall an incident when I took a horrible tasting (chalky, very bland) liquid amoxicillin (pink in a huge ghetto medicine brown bottle), and subsequently vomiting in the sink. The doctor never prescribed amoxicillin again and on all medical forms since then I have listed said medication as an allergy. First thing in the morning when the doctor was asking me if I was allergic to anything, I told him about amoxicillin. He asked me what happened, and proceeded to tell me that it wasn’t an allergic reaction to the medicine, just a reaction. Of course I was very skeptical about all of this (I’d spent a long time believing that I was allergic to the stuff), but he was the professional. I guess the language issue made me a little bit skeptical as well (although, I was pretty sure I understood everything that was going on throughout the day). Little did I realize that he would soon be putting amoxicillin into my body through my veins. Unless my allergic reaction was tiredness, I guess I wasn’t allergic to amoxicillin afterall...but due to my vomiting history, the doctor prescribed me to tummy calmer-downers to prevent any possible vomiting accidents.
Oh, and you know how everything’s apparently more expensive in Switzerland? Well medication definitely goes with that train of thought.
I’m staying at a friend’s place that night, because they’ve got an elevator (still not quite able to walk), and when I return to their place, I fall asleep. They wake me up for dinner (I’m supposed to have food in my system for one of the pills that I’m supposed to take), but I’m not really hungry at all (come to think of it, I haven’t eaten anything all day – remember the barrage of tests? I guess they weren’t too concerned about giving me a lunch break) and I am forced to have some soup along with a sandwich. Then comes the fun part. Swallowing these huge pills. I’ve never been a pill girl. I’m a fan of the liquid medication variety. I was proud of myself when I took these
HUGE pills after I had my wisdom teeth out, but for some reason, the ones this time around didn’t go down as easily. It wasn’t a pleasant sight. There was almost some vomiting involved, but it wasn’t because of the amoxicillin.
Today is Friday, October 21, 2005Anyway, I basically slept all night and was woken up the next morning to make sure that I wouldn’t miss my check-up. I felt better...I could put a little bit of weight on my foot, so that’s a good sign. The date was May 13th, 2005.
I went to the hospital clinic to get checked out and the doctor immediately took my temperature and declared that I had a fever of 39.7. They took more blood and found that my white blood cell count was even higher than the day prior. Not good. Next they had a specialist (whom I would later learn was a surgeon – sign of things to come) look at my ankle. Soon the word "abscess" was floating around. They weren’t sure where it came from, but there was an infection around my ankle and they wanted to operate on it to make sure that it didn’t spread. I remember that at the time they didn’t really make it sound like a big deal or anything. I’ve never been afraid of hospitals (I actually really enjoy them, and doctors, and medical procedures for the most part) so that combined with the doctor’s tone of voice made me think that this wasn’t too big of a deal. It was morning, so I sat around waiting for them to tell me what would happen next. I heard rumblings that I would be going in to the operating room that afternoon, so I just lay on the bed and relaxed. I wanted to my friends to call my parents at home to let them know what was going on because, well, I thought they might be interested. My friends had just stepped out for a moment (we had all thought that the morning’s appointment would be a quick one in which the doctors would just tell me to keep taking the medication and then send me home) and would be coming back later to pick me up. A nurse came in to my room and told me that I needed to get ready for my operation…immediately. Hmmm...I asked if I could wait a bit for my friends to come to pass on the message to call my parents, but the nurse said there was no time. I had to go to surgery immediately. That’s when I realized that maybe I was a little bit sicker than I thought I was.
I bet my friends were just a little surprised when they came back and heard that I was in the operating room.
Anyway, they let me keep my glasses on (thank goodness) and gave me a choice. To be asleep or wide awake. Of course I chose to be awake for the operation. I wanted to watch if possible I said. They said that I would be lying down with a curtain around me, so I probably wouldn’t be able to watch what would be happening. I came prepared. With my digital camera (I’d post the picture, but there may be some skittish people reading this). The local anaesthetic was probably the most painful shot I’ve ever had. It was on the top of my right foot. The anaesthesiologist had a little difficulty finding a vein in my foot and he admitted that there may be possibility that I would
have to be put under because it’s so hard to find a vein in feet, but on the second try he found one.
I was wheeled into the operating room and chatted for the whole 30-45min surgery. We talked about what was happening, how it looked, how it felt, discussed the photo, etc. I remember a moment where the anaesthesiologist asked if I could lift up my leg, and I was trying really really hard, but it felt like it weighed a ton, like someone was holding it down, but I couldn’t even feel that person’s hands. At least I knew that the drugs were working. I remember discussing what the abscess looked like. A huge pimple. A pus filled pimple. ("C’est comme quoi?" "Un peu degoutant." "Est-ce qu’il y a quelques choses dedans?" "Oui, pus." "Pus?" "Oui, pus." "Comme...errr...pus?" "Oui!" "Quel couleur?" "Le couleur de pus." "Un peu jaune?" "Oui." "Oh...interessant!") They drained the pus (okay, bacteria) away to the lab to be tested and I asked (again) how I got this infection. They said they had no idea, because I’m so healthy otherwise. They asked again if I was pregnant. I said no. They asked again…like, was there ANY chance that I was pregnant. Err…no, I was pretty sure I wasn’t. Then they asked if I might have AIDS. So abscesses are a sign of AIDS? Well, in a very very minimal chance, yes. They just couldn’t figure out where I got sick from, so they said I could be tested just to make sure. Sure, why not. The surgeon also mentioned that my infection hadn’t spread to my ankle itself, and after the fact they started telling me about just how serious this infection could have been, and how they were really concerned that it was going to spread and that’s why they wanted to operate immediately. They saw how much havoc it was wreaking in a completely healthy body, so they were really worried. Good ‘ole naïve me just thought that it wasn’t anything serious.
In the recovery room, they took my temperature, and I kid you not, now that my abscess had been drained, I was back to normal. That put everything into perspective for me. The moment they get rid of my infection, my body calms down and goes back to normal. Wow. It was then that everything that had been happening for the past couple of days made sense. My ankle was swollen because of the infection. I had a fever and my white blood cell count was out of wack because my body was trying so hard to fight off this potentially, errr, dare I say, fatal infection. It makes sense.
It was Friday, and they were expecting that I would be able to leave the hospital on the Monday. Yet another thing that made me realize that this was a little bit more serious than I had thought. No quick in and out deal. I had to stay there to make sure it didn’t flare up again.
I was wheeled into my own room on the third floor of the hospital (no TV, darn it) to rest. I was given a meal (not too tasty unfortunately, or maybe I just didn’t have a good appetite), and some painkillers in case I needed them. I didn’t. I was still hooked up to an IV (amoxicillin) and was told that I had to remain in bed and couldn’t move my leg. I had to keep it in a contraption which kept my foot flexed at all times. Yes, that meant bedpan. Fun times.
Friends came to visit, chat, keep me company and deliver presents (too kind of them), essentials and the trusty laptop (see compilation of movies watched – June 2005).
The nurses were fantastic. One had the thickest Quebecois accent ever, it was great!
The date is: Sunday, October 23, 2005Saturday was not a fun day. I woke up in pain, so I decided to take the painkillers for once. After waiting for the drugs to kick in, I was still in a lot of pain. It was like someone was taking my heel and digging their nails into it. It was a pain like I’ve never felt before. It hurt a lot more than I thought it would. I was crying I was in so much pain (and I like to think that I have a pretty high tolerance of pain, so I figured that this was probably pretty bad). The nurse came in and gave me a shot in my arm for the pain. He came back in to open up my bandage to clean my incisions and to see if there was anything wrong with it. When he cleaned the incisions, I snapped a couple photos of my ankle. It was pretty interesting. They had threaded a ribbon kind of thing through my incisions to keep them open. And you could tell that they loaded on the iodine. Not a pleasant colour. It looked a
LOT less swollen than the last time I had looked at it. There was a fair amount of bruising on the top of my foot where the anaesthesiologist had pricked me. After the nurse cleaned the incisions and re-bandaged my ankle up, I chatted with him for a bit and asked him what kind of painkiller he had given me. Morphine. Oh great, the hard stuff. I was surprised that he just pricked me instead of asking me about if I really wanted morphine. Anyway, I was still in a lot of pain. And then, after some time, I got the
worst headache ever. How annoying. I wasn’t really in the mood to eat my breakfast, so I just sat and watched a DVD. My head just hurt so badly. Like a migraine…and usually using the computer makes my head hurt even more. My brother called me on the phone, and I remember all of a sudden just feeling really crappy. I thought maybe if was because I hadn’t eaten anything (it was almost lunch time by this rate) so I munched on the bun with my breakfast. I was putting a lot of effort into the phone conversation, but I just felt like I needed to go to sleep to get rid of my headache. I went to sleep hoping that when I woke up again the headache would be gone along with the pain in my foot (which was still there, just not as bad, because all I could concentrate on was the pain in my head). I woke up that afternoon to some visitors. That was a little difficult trying to carry on a conversation. So the moral of the story is that morphine doesn’t work well with my body. It doesn’t make me feel fabulous like it does for some people, it just gives me the worst headache ever. Yet another life experience!
The next day, I wasn’t in as much pain (it was bearable) but was still bed ridden. The doctor and his sidekicks came in to take a look at my ankle again. After more questioning, they figured that the infection MUST have come from my blister that I had gotten two weeks prior, even though they were confused as to why it took this long for the infection to flare up (usually it’s instantaneous). So, this meant that Monday, April 25th, 2005 was when it all started. I played ultimate Frisbee on this day and got the world’s worst blisters on my feet from my orthotics. That Friday, I HAD noticed that my ankle was a little bit swollen (swollen enough that I took a picture of it), but didn’t think anything of it, because I had been walking around all day and it was bashed around a big from carrying my luggage. It subsequently went away (along with my blisters) until the beginning of the events from this post.
The doctor also told me that the bacteria in my abscess was a strain of streptococcus. Wow, the common cold can turn into this. How powerful a little change in genetic makeup can be.
Oh, and I don’t have AIDS.
So my foot all the way up to my knee is quite purple. And swollen too. The nurse decides to wrap my whole calf in alcohol. I’m left on the bed in the contraption that cradles my leg in a wet bandage. It’s most uncomfortable. Later that day when the nurse takes off the wet bandages, my skin is all wrinkled because it’s been wet all day. Yuck.
Later, the skin on my calf and around my ankle starts peeling off. Ugh.
And the doctors tell me that I can’t leave on Monday afterall. I was pretty positive about the whole experience, but for some reason my optimism ran out on one day. I wanted to get back to work, I wanted to walk, I wanted my normal life. It was pretty hard. It was another life lesson. I had to be patient. Be optimistic. And still, try to be positive. It was a tough day, but I learned a lot from it.
There was a pretty good routine that I got into at the hospital. The days dragged on because I didn’t have much to do, even after I was allowed to get up to go to the washroom and stuff. I always liked picking my meals, and trying new items, even though they most often than not didn’t turn out as good as I had imagined them. I never minded getting woken up in the middle of the night to get my temperature checked and to get my shots. I liked limping down the hall every day. Seeing the nurses come into my room to clean my incisions, give me shot, take my temperature, give me food, etc etc. I liked seeing friends who had come to visit.
I wasn’t allowed to leave the hospital until the Wednesday. I was in the hospital for a total of 5 days.
It was a bittersweet day when I left the hospital. I was sad to leave the place that taught me so much. To leave the people who had been so kind to me. But of course I was happy because it meant that I was getting better.
It was a positive experience. I got to see what the Swiss medical system is like. I learned a lot of French. I practiced a lot of French. I learned some things about myself. I got some down time. I got to watch some movies. I met some people.
Les Cadolles is a fantastic hospital. The nurses, doctors and all the staff that I met during this experience were so helpful, kind, sympathetic, patient, this list goes on. I always felt safe. I trusted everything that was happening. One negative thing. The food wasn’t too great (I think I’ll blame it on my lack of appetite from the antibiotics). The water they provide is pretty fancy (Arkina).
After I was out of the hospital, I stayed a week at a friend’s place (the one with an elevator). I didn’t go to work and I watched a lot of DVDs and read a lot of magazines. I wasn’t allowed to leave the premises (except for when I had to go in for a checkup). Any time that I stood up my foot and calf would turn a deep shade of purple. It wasn’t painful, just throbbed a bit (makes sense – the blood pooling and stuff).
I was pretty impatient, and the day that I went to the hospital, instead of taking a cab home like I was told to, I jumped ship and took the bus (requiring a little bit of walking). I was limping and took my time. It wasn’t bad. It felt nice to be outside for a bit and to get a little bit of exercise. No harm done.
There was a little bit of harm done that Friday though when I went to a friend’s house (by cab) and stayed out pretty late. I had to walk to a car that dropped me off at home, and the ankle felt fine, but it wasn’t. the next day it was really really purple and swollen. I was a little worried, but I learned my lesson. I had to take it easy no matter how hard it would be.
As thankful as I was to have a place to stay while I was recouperating, I was really glad to be able to get back into my own place. I hate imposing, and it’s always more comfortable when you’re sleeping in your own bed and stuff. And when you have options of what to wear each day. My apartment was filthy (some moldy things were discovered upon entry) and needed a serious airing out. Going up stairs was a slow process, but going down stairs was even more difficult. Flexing my foot was easy, pointing it was another matter. My ankle was still swollen, so flexibility was an issue. And the whole time I was still relegated to taking huge amoxicillin pills. I have become the master of the spoon crushing, yogurt mixing, nose pinching, juice chasing routine. Booyah.
I was so glad to get back to work. I was walking pretty slowly, but I could handle it. I was a little tired, but really excited to be back and going about my normal routine (except for the fact that I took a taxi to work each day).
The antibiotics were really strong. So strong that the skin on my hands and feet started peeling. The feet didn’t bother me much, because I figured that it was an after effect of the alcohol soaking incident, but the skin from the palms of my hands worried me. It was really really disgusting to look at, and I didn’t know why it was happening. Luckily a doctor friend of mine reassured me that it was due to the medication that I was taking and that it would go away soon. Little did I know that the skin peeling from my palms and soles of my feet would last from June 3rdish to June 26th. Just shows you how toxic antibiotics can be, and just another proof that I really was a lot sicker than I though I was. The doctors were really fighting to get rid of this infection. I also lost my horrible cough too. For a long time afterwards, my ankle would get sore after walking. After check ups at the hospital, I was told I was recovering fine and that I needed to get back to a normal pace of life, but not to push it too much. I had to listen to my body and rest when my ankle told me to. I needed to do my own physio, and the exercises that I learned when I sprained my ankle a couple years back came in handy. It was a long recovery, one that even in the beginning of the summer I wasn’t over, but it was worth every minute of it.
I can’t emphasize enough how much I learned from the experience.
Last night, I went to see Wallace & Gromit - The Curse of the Were-Rabbit...all by myself. It was the first time I went to see a movie in a theatre by myself and given the events of the rest of the day (I was in Basel - might write up about it) I was totally unfazed by this challenge. It was just one of those days that doing stuff on my own was liberating. I thought it might be weird to go watch a movie by myself (kind of like going to eat out by myself, but that turned out really well, so whatever) but wanted to see a relaxing and hopefully funny movie to end of a splendid day. The one annoying thing about experience (other than the fact that the ticket was 18CHF!) was that I had settled myself into a balcony seat (granted, the seats were HUGE and you could fit a whole row of seats in the space between each of the rows - although that meant that there was nothing to put your feet on) which I switched to after feeling like the ground floor seats would make me have to watch the whole movie practically lying on my back, there was a pretty rude sounding lady with her husband and two grandchildren/children (you never can know these days) telling me that I was in her seat. She was speaking to me in English with a British accent (a lot of the theatre goers had British accents (Basel is in the German speaking part of Switzerland, so were all these people ex-pats? Tourists?). Now, I have to say that in all of the movies that I have gone to see in Switzerland, on the ticket, yes there is an assigned seat, but you don't actually sit there. It's first come, first serve, like in Canada. Since I wasn't 100% sure this theatre was the same (even though no one else really looked at their tickets to see where they were sitting when they walked in the door), the balcony seating was still pretty empty and the fact that there were two young children with this rude lady, I just got up and changed to another equally good seat. Rude people are the pits.
