The Chemist

A few nights ago I visited a Chemist (small drug store) in hopes of finding some sort of decongestant to help clear me up and help me to sleep. It ended up being an interesting experience.

First off, he only understood very basic English. I think my Bengali may have been about as useful to our exchange than his English. Still, that doesn't help much since I don't know how to say "decongestant" in Bengali. Perhaps "going to the doctor" will be our next lesson. Gesturing didn't seem to be working all that well either. I whipped out my phrasebook in the hopes of finding the perfect word to convey my problem. Unfortunately the best I could come up with was "closed" as a word I could apply to my nose. I'm not sure if that actually got the idea across or not, but he seemed to understand something. He grabbed some nose drops for me. I was hoping for decongestant pills, but nose drops didn't seem like an entirely unreasonable form for such a drug.

I still wasn't really sure if he really understood what I needed. The box was in multiple languages (including English), so I decided to play it safe by double-checking what the box thought it was for. It turns out that the box didn't actually say what the drug was for. It did tell me all of the active ingredients, plus how to use and store the stuff. It even told me the price, which was nice so I knew I wasn't getting ripped off. Still, it would have gone a long way towards comforting me to see something like "Clears up stuffy noses."

The good news is that it hasn't killed me or caused any adverse side affects... so far. The bad news is that it hasn't really done a whole lot of anything. It might have loosened stuff up a little, but I'm honestly not convinced that there was anything more than a placebo effect going on. I'm still pretty congested, although I think it's starting to get better. Perhaps I'll be back to 100% by the time we leave for Sri Lanka on Thursday.