I lead a privileged life. I have bronchitis, and the doctor told me to stay home for the week. Okay. If I was at university, I would have arrived home from the doctor, frantically e-mailed all my professors to reschedule exams and paper due dates, canceled dozens of scheduled tutoring sessions and work meetings, and proceeded to try to get better with a tiny voice in my head saying “with-every-day-you-lie-here-the-further-behind-you-get.” Not a relaxing or healthy way to recuperate. I’d also experience this voice if I currently worked a traditional American 9-5 job, where people have very few sick days and therefore spend a good percentage of the time they are sick at the office instead of home in bed.
At the beginning of the school year, I cursed our school’s “internal substitution policy.” Now, lying sick in bed, I love it (oh, the irony)! When a teacher is ill or on a field trip, the school assigns a teacher to cover his or her classes. The stars were not aligned in my favor in the 1st semester and I substituted a lot – a lot, a lot. I’ve discussed substitution before and have said that it’s stressful because you’re given no lesson plan and you’re typically given very, very little advanced notice (sometimes more than 1 hour advanced notice is rare). You also typically watch lots of students at once (approximately 20-35), and I’m very happy (yes, spoiled) with my classes of only 10-18 students, thank-you-very-much. Now I’m a “fantastic substitute” and barely bat an eye with they throw 35 sugar-high children at me, but it was a difficult adjustment at the beginning.
Now that I’m sick, I’ve discovered why the substitution system is brilliant. First, I don’t have to create lesson plans for the substitute teachers – they’re responsible for designing a lesson (or monitoring my class as a study hall, for example). Therefore, there’s less stress for the ill teacher – brilliant! Second, I know that I’ve substituted for the majority of teachers who are substituting for me this week at least (at least!) a dozen times, so I’m not wracked with guilt about missing school (okay, a little bit of guilt, I dislike burdening them with my classes, but now I appreciate the “I’ll scratch your back and then you’ll scratch mine” substitute system at my school). Also, because I design my own English conversation curriculum, all I have to do to prepare for school next week is decide what lesson I’ll cut this semester. Very, very difficult. :) Recuperating without lots of anxiety is a wonderfully unusual experience.
When I called the school and asked for help finding a doctor to listen to my lungs, I wasn’t surprised that they sent me to a student’s father’s practice (Colleen had also visited this doctor in the fall). (When I told my students the Friday after Thanksgiving that I’d eaten chicken to celebrate because we couldn’t locate any turkey, they asked me why I hadn’t talked to Student X because his father is a butcher and could have located a turkey for me. We’re a very self-sufficient little school community.) On Tuesday, the doctor’s son (Colleen’s English conversation student) walked me to his dad’s practice and then to the pharmacy. I was exhausted and not breathing well, but he chattered away. I always love talking to students one-on-one, and sometimes I learn lots of fascinating bits of school news and gossip that the other teachers try to hide from me (well, they don’t hide it necessarily, but they don’t go out of their way to tell me). I don’t teach Michał, but I do teach one class of sophomores. Attempting to at least infrequently contribute to the conversation (I felt awful), I said that a lot of his classmates were sick last Friday. Without hesitation, Michał replied that they were probably skipping my class. Luckily, I know this isn’t true. The students were absent for the whole school day, not only my lesson (thank you, class attendance book).
(Quick sidebar: I’ve had only one student frequently skip my class, and the school directors called his parents and now that’s resolved. I should say that I didn’t tattle on him, but thought perhaps he was deathly ill and no one had told me. They don’t always tell me when they know a student is going to be absent for an extended period of time. If I had rebelled better in high school, I could have anticipated the “oh no, he’s skipping your class” response from miles away when I asked his homeroom teacher if he was okay because I hadn’t seen him in a while.)
I asked Michał why he thought students would skip English conversation. He told me (without hesitation – the kids here are brutally honest) that in the past, English conversation was a study hall or free period, where students were allowed to study for other classes, watch English movies, or play board games. This year, he said, Colleen and I are organized and expect our students to learn and speak English during our lessons – unfortunately, apparently, for the students (hmmm...maybe I read the job description wrong when it said “English conversation teacher”). It’s one of the best back-handed teaching compliments I’ve received.
Michał’s father, Dr. H, listened to my lungs and prescribed a couple medications. I had told Michał that I didn’t need any medications necessarily (I have medications that I brought from the U.S. for my asthma); I only wanted a doctor to listen to my lungs. Michał told me matter-of-factly that it’s a doctor’s job to prescribe medications and that we would go to the pharmacy after my appointment to pick up my prescriptions. For my appointment, I had written down a couple key phrases in Polish (bronchitis, pneumonia, congestion, asthma, sore throat, etc.) and brought my asthma medications with me to show him. Between his minimal English and my Polish phrases and Charades (coughing, touching my throat when I talked about it), we communicated okay. I had felt pretty certain in my self-diagnosis of bronchitis, but wanted to check that it wasn’t developing into, for example, pneumonia. Dr. H said I did have bronchitis (“zapalenie oskrzeli” in Polish) and my lungs were congested, but they weren’t too awful. He told me to stay home for the week and take the three medications he prescribed. When I asked him to describe what the medications were for (for example, cough – suppressant or expectorant, pain, sore throat, etc.), that’s when communication broke down and he didn’t understand me. Perhaps you don’t ask doctors here questions like “Why are you prescribing these medications?” Oh, well! A successful appointment in my opinion because someone in the medical profession listened to my lungs and said I shouldn’t worry. Yay!
After traveling to the pharmacy, I translated the medications’ packages and instructions at home (and smiled at the memory of my sisters singing “you must always read the label, you must always read it well, in the most delicious way” from Arrested Development). I decided to take one only of the three medications he prescribed. (I won’t re-hash all my logic and medical research here – except to say that he gave me one drug with 5x the amount of codeine allowed in over-the-counter cold medication in America. No thanks. I’m coughing up mucous fine on my own without your help, thank-you-very-much.) Then, exhausted, I took a 6-hour nap.
How did I get bronchitis? Well, the stars aligned against me a bit last week. My screaming-at-3 a.m.-they-punched-a-hole-in-my-wall-this-month-neighbors are renovating their apartment and this renovation somehow involves my apartment 90% of the time, except that in one month they’ll have a new bathroom and kitchen and I’ll only have their sawdust. But I’m a good neighbor and I’ve re-arranged my schedule to go home and let them into my apartment, given them full access to my kitchen and bathroom for hours, let them turn my water off several times a day without notifying me, etc. But my apartment – the size of my college dorm room (the nice senior year one with a living room and bedroom) – is a construction zone, and despite how frequently I dust, mop the floors, and vacuum, the dust is winning and crawling into my sad lungs.
It’s also cold here (no, I’m not surprised, it’s winter in Poland), and my lungs never liked cold air. I bundle up and cover my mouth for walks outside, but it’s cold (approximately 0-10 degrees F every day). My feet are my transportation here, and despite how I try to protect my lungs I spend a lot of time walking outside and breathing the air.
Speaking of Polish air. It’s polluted. Badly polluted. Very, very badly polluted.
I have two early memories of “Polish air horror” from October. First, I remember waking up one morning and staring in horror at the chimneys outside my apartment windows as I watched puffs of dark black smoke rise into the sky because people had started burning coal to heat their homes. Second, I remember walking outside one autumn morning into a “foggy fairytale,” and when I asked one of the teachers at school if it was fog or smog, she said, “smog from the chimneys”. If you walk up and down my street, you’ll notice how the beautiful once-white stone buildings are now dark and discolored from all the coal burning. My breathing difficulties with the air pollution here started in the fall, but luckily I’ve stayed rather healthy and kept my asthma under control. My school director also said there’s a Silesia health warning this month that due to unusual winter air pressure – low? high? she didn’t know – the smog from the chimneys this month isn’t rising but staying low to the ground, and causing lots of respiratory infections.
Now, in retrospect, I don’t know why the awful air quality in Cieszyn surprised me. I went to a Traveler’s Health and Immunization Center for recommended vaccinations in August before leaving for Poland. They prepared a “health information” packet for me with information about the countries I said I’d probably visit this year. Included in the 10-page Poland information packet was this two-sentence warning: “Krakow and Silesia have very high levels of air pollution. Travelers with significant pulmonary, cardiac, or asthmatic problems may be considerably impaired.” No, I do not know why I did not further research this statement and why it didn’t send up a red flag (especially the “very high levels” part). Perhaps because my asthma was under control (and I wouldn’t say I have a significant asthma problem) or because when someone says “there’s some air pollution there,” you think, “of course, there’s air pollution everywhere!” Also, when you hear you’re living in a city next to the mountains, you (or at least, I) imagine clean, mountain air. Nope.
I’m privileged to live in a home heated by hot water, not coal (a question I never fathomed asking during my interview but could have had disastrous consequences – I would have had to move or return to America). But the majority of homes and apartments here are heated by coal. Why? Because it’s cheaper. When apartment hunting, my in-their-young-20s friends said that could never afford an apartment with a heating system that isn’t coal-based because of the expenses. My friend who’s a pediatrician and very health-conscious also lives in a home heated by coal. Yikes! From what I’ve heard, the region is trying to help people transition from coal-burning stoves to other methods of home heating, but the transition requires a lot of money and effort on both the government’s part and on individual citizen’s parts. (When researching Poland’s air pollution policies, I learned that in 1991, the U.S. government forgave a percentage of Poland’s debt because Poland agreed to invest money in domestic pollution control.)
Coal here is called “Polish black gold,” and it’s also the #1 source of pollution in Poland because it contains large quantities of sulfur. Poland’s economy depends on its industrial centers, factories, power plants and mines, but these industries are also responsible for burning tons of coal that pollute the air. How do you solve the country’s pollution problem without crippling its economy?
One source of motivation for addressing Poland’s air quality - the health of its citizens. A report by the World Health Organization in the late 1990s stated that infant mortality, circulatory and respiratory disease, and cancer rates were significantly higher in Poland than other countries in Europe. The average life expectancy in southern Poland is 5 years less than the rest of the country. Earlier this year I discovered a European air quality map online and, after you zoom in on the red/magenta zone between Ostrava (Czech Republic) and Krakow (Poland) where I live, you’ll understand why it’s bookmarked on my computer as “depressing air quality map.” They weren’t kidding at the Traveler’s Health and Immunization Center (again, why would I doubt them...) about “very high levels of air pollution.” http://www.eea.europa.eu/themes/air/airbase/interpolated
According to the country’s Council for the Protection of the Natural Environment annual report in 1998, millions of tons of sulfur dioxide (from coal burning in Polish factories, power plants, and from home heating systems) are released every year into Poland’s atmosphere. In 1995, Poland ranked 7th in the world in sulfur dioxide emissions, directly behind the United States (ranked 6th). Again, Poland – the size of the state of New Mexico – ranked directly behind the whole United States. I can’t locate better up-to-date information about Poland’s current sulfur dioxide emissions, but people I talk to here say it’s only slowly improving. The air pollution here also contributes to the dreariness of Polish winters. The Council for the Protection of the Natural Environment annual reported that between 1921 and 1990, the average number of cloudy days per year increased from 10 to 183. I loved visiting Slovakia this month because I could see the stars at night!
Poland is trying to reduce its emissions, especially industry emissions, but a second part of the problem is that the Czech Republic and Germany, especially at Poland’s southern and southwestern border, are also “donating” a lot of air pollution from their power plants and factories. If only international borders included bubbles that prevented polluted air from drifting into neighboring countries! Poland is frequently in discussion with Germany and the Czech Republic about reducing air pollution. The southwest corner of Poland where Poland, the Czech Republic, and Germany meet is called the “Black Triangle” because of all the pollution from industry. Latest air quality reports (2007 from the Council for the Protection of the Natural Environment) say that 75% of the pollution produced by the 3 countries in the Black Triangle drifts into Poland.
Improving air quality and reducing air pollution in Poland is a difficult, complicated, and expensive problem. It’s especially expensive for a country that is struggling to strengthen its economy in order to switch to the Euro (the “switch date goal” of 2012 was pushed back to 2015 this year). It’s also difficult because air pollution isn’t a self-contained problem, but involves communication and cooperation with the also industry-heavy neighboring countries of Germany and the Czech Republic. And, because of the high costs of reducing air pollution, it’s not a top priority for Poles. In a 2004 study entitled “Valuing Air Quality in Poland,” Yale University researchers Dziegielewska and Mendelsohn reported that Polish citizens are not willing (a better phrase would be “cannot afford”) to contribute a lot of money towards Poland’s air quality reforms, and they don’t feel improving air quality should be one of the government’s top priorities either because of the great expenses.
I know that being an asthmatic affects how much importance I place on the quality of the air that I breathe. Today I’m grateful for asthma medication and that Poland is gradually trying – despite all the complications and expenses – to engage in thoughtful discussions about air pollution problem solving that won’t cripple its economy but also give everyone cleaner air to breathe.
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