After arriving at Mia-Simone's in Oslo and getting a good night's sleep, the next day we simply rested. We lounged in bed, read books, and were bums. It felt delightful. Later in the afternoon we went downstairs and hung out with Mia-Simone, and Brendan made dinner that night for the three of us and Mia-Simone's flatmate, Lauren. We played some Yatzy (not quite the same rules as Yahtzee, but very similar) and enjoyed laughing together. We felt very comfortable staying with Mia-Simone and Lauren and were a little reluctant to get back on the road. We ate a late breakfast together the next day and took a leisurely time getting ready, and then checked our email. We had invitations to come and interview at a couple of Berlitz locations! This got us motivated to continue on to Germany. We responded to the emails to try and set up some possible interview dates, and then set out on the road once more.
We walked from their place to an E-6 south entrance. It wasn't a busy entrance, but it was in a beautiful spot surrounded by high hills and trees, and the weather was finally not rainy but rather beautiful. Sometimes slower spots almost seem like better spots. It's as if the people passing us realize that we will have a hard time getting a ride, so they feel more responsible for helping us get to a different spot. I sometimes think that people who pass us at very busy spots are just thinking "Ah, I'm sure someone else will stop for them." So just 11 minutes of waiting and we had a ride. This was at 2:46pm.
Our ride was from Nels, a football (soccer)-coach dad. His team had recently played in the Norway Cup, the largest youth football tournament in the world. They had been eliminated after a couple of days and even though they had planned to stay and watch the rest of the tournament, the coaches were so disappointed that they left. They made it up to their team by taking them out for pizza later. One of my Norwegian cousins was also participating in this tournament with his team from Haugesund, but I'm not sure how they did in the end. If any Norwegian relatives are reading this, could you post a comment with the results?
Nels wasn't going far but said he could drop us off at a better spot outside the city. It was indeed outside the city, but not the greatest spot. It was another plain entrance rather than an entrance by a gas station, which is usually better for us. Even so, we got a great ride within half an hour from a man named Frederick who was going quite close to Gothenburg, which was where we were trying to get. Frederick is from Sweden but had been in Norway for the weekend for a jazz festival. He is our age or a little younger, but has a house and I think he said he has a kid. He has been working since he was 17 years old and now has his own company. He sounded a little jealous of our travels because he feels he is too tied down to do much traveling.
Frederick dropped us off at a gas station. We used the restrooms and by this point Brendan wasn't feeling very well. He wasn't sure if it was his appendix, but the pain was feeling similar to what he has experienced in the past, so we started talking about the possibility of going to a hospital. He wasn't feeling so bad, though, so we kept on hitching. We walked out to the freeway entrance and soon had a ride with Leo, a man we'd had a ride with on our way north to Norway. As Brendan described in a previous blog, he felt more comfortable with Leo because we had already met him, and Leo showed us the way to the hospital in Gothenburg.
The rest of the story you have probably already read, so I will end part 2 here. We are in Saarbrücken now and had interviews at the Berlitz here yesterday. They were the last of our scheduled interviews, so now we are going to return to visit friends in Bonn and Düsseldorf as we wait to hear back from the Berlitz locations where we already interviewed--Magdeburg and Hamburg. Next post I will try to bring everything back to the present moment, but for now we must begin another hitchhiking day.
Showing posts with label hospital. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hospital. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Wow, past couple of days
Hello everybody.
We are still alive.
At some point really soon, we will write a blog about how we afford it, since that's the absolutely most common question we get. We'll also update everybody on the past several days of hitchhiking.
But first things first.
We're alive.
I had a brief bout with appendicitis a few days ago. My stomach started to hurt as it has in the past, and on our way to Gothenburg, I told Stina that I had to see a doctor. We had just gotten a ride with Leo... a man who picked us up near where he had dropped us off about 10 days earlier (that's right, two rides with the same guy!). I think because he had given us a ride before, I felt more comfortable talking with him openly about what I needed... I.E. a hospital. He took us to the public transit (a ferry to the center of town) and showed us which tram to get on and which stop to get off at for the hospital. We did as we were told. I tried not to groan with pain, but when we got off the tram, I walked about 100 meters and then lay down on the ground. Stina went to find the entrance to the emergency room. It was only 30 meters away. I got up and walked in. Stina had gotten a number. It was 6:45pm. We waited an hour or two. A nurse called my number. He was very kind and very clear. First, once we were away from Stina, he asked if there was anything secret I was here for, then he did the things nurses do when they're checking you out like blood pressure and temperature (in the ear!). Then he took my passport and my Visa. I paid 2898 (398 dollars) kröner, which is what Americans must pay. He told me this would cover the emergency room visit, but anything else would be extra. Then he sent me back out to the waiting room with a spiffy new bracelet that said my name and had a bar code on it. A kind fellow waiting room patient offered us any help she could provide. Stina borrowed her cell phone and called the couchsurfer we had lined up for the night to explain that we wouldn't make it, 'cause we were in the hospital. We watched very quiet Family Guy, Simpsons, some Stevel Segal and Keenan Ivory Wayans movie, and had just gotten to a Jackie Chan film called The Accidental Spy when an orderly led me to a room just outside of the waiting room where I could lie down on a gurney. They watch TV very quietly since it's all in English and they read the subtitles, I guess. Stina got to dozing on my shoulder after I made her tell me a story promising that all would be well. She reassured me with a story about how my appendicitis was actually a bizarre pregnancy that would have to be resolved after 9 months of pain and a c-section. She could have been more reassuring. I rubbed my belly and jiggled it, and this seemed to ease the pain. I've noticed in past circumstances that showers tend to ease the pain as well. I hypothesize that the nerve endings start to pay attention to the surface sensations and distract my brain from the pain a little bit. The doctor arrived at I don't know what time. As soon as he entered the room, my pain eased a little more. There was something very healing about this humorful Swedish doctor. He felt my belly, listened to my description of the pain and my medical history, and joked about the U2 concert. He told me that the symptoms all added up to a minor flare-up. He said they used to take out all appendices, and he could do it "snip, snip in 10 minutes" but then I might have bowel problems tomorrow or in 20 years. So he came up with two recommendations: 1. He could keep me overnight for observation or 2. He could send me on my way. I said our travel was flexible, and so a day or two, if he recommended it, would be fine... would it cost much? His response... he didn't know. From this point on, I felt very much like I was in an American hospital. Nobody had any inkling how much anything cost. He said he would ask the secretary, but he couldn't imagine it was more than a couple hundred kröner. He left and came back... she didn't know either... she'd tried to find the answer on the internet, too, but couldn't. He said, though, that he would make sure I was sent away with some antibiotics and painkillers as a gift from Gothenburg. That was a funny phrase to me that he mentioned several times. He said "I can't stand here and say Sweden is perfect, it won't cost you anything, but I think so." Then he sat in a chair and chatted with us for a bit, which was really nice to see. Hospitals often make me feel harried and hurried, but I felt like if something was wrong, I would have an opportunity to tell him. I think that's a rare gift that some doctors possess. I've seen it before, and it's one of the best feelings I can get from a doctor. We told him about hitchhiking and I mentioned that if he said we should not do it, we wouldn't. He didn't say that. He poked me once to prove a point... as if to say, "I know this hurts, but it doesn't hurt SOOOO much". He was right, of course.
My mother keeps saying I have a high tolerance for pain... but I wonder if maybe I have a low tolerance. We keep hearing stories now about people having their appendices taken out, but doctors don't want to take mine out.
Later a nurse came in and gave me morphine. I felt mostly better already, but wasn't awake enough to protest.
To conclude, I spent the night in the ward. Stina also got a bed to sleep on. The nurses were very nice, one of them even promised to find out how much a night in the hospital would cost. She never did. I felt much better in the morning, ate breakfast, saw the doctor one more time, took a shower, got antibiotics ("a present from the hospital"), and checked out with the nurse. I have no idea if they're just going to charge my Visa card for the further expenses or if everything was covered in that initial 2898 kröner.
We are still alive.
At some point really soon, we will write a blog about how we afford it, since that's the absolutely most common question we get. We'll also update everybody on the past several days of hitchhiking.
But first things first.
We're alive.
I had a brief bout with appendicitis a few days ago. My stomach started to hurt as it has in the past, and on our way to Gothenburg, I told Stina that I had to see a doctor. We had just gotten a ride with Leo... a man who picked us up near where he had dropped us off about 10 days earlier (that's right, two rides with the same guy!). I think because he had given us a ride before, I felt more comfortable talking with him openly about what I needed... I.E. a hospital. He took us to the public transit (a ferry to the center of town) and showed us which tram to get on and which stop to get off at for the hospital. We did as we were told. I tried not to groan with pain, but when we got off the tram, I walked about 100 meters and then lay down on the ground. Stina went to find the entrance to the emergency room. It was only 30 meters away. I got up and walked in. Stina had gotten a number. It was 6:45pm. We waited an hour or two. A nurse called my number. He was very kind and very clear. First, once we were away from Stina, he asked if there was anything secret I was here for, then he did the things nurses do when they're checking you out like blood pressure and temperature (in the ear!). Then he took my passport and my Visa. I paid 2898 (398 dollars) kröner, which is what Americans must pay. He told me this would cover the emergency room visit, but anything else would be extra. Then he sent me back out to the waiting room with a spiffy new bracelet that said my name and had a bar code on it. A kind fellow waiting room patient offered us any help she could provide. Stina borrowed her cell phone and called the couchsurfer we had lined up for the night to explain that we wouldn't make it, 'cause we were in the hospital. We watched very quiet Family Guy, Simpsons, some Stevel Segal and Keenan Ivory Wayans movie, and had just gotten to a Jackie Chan film called The Accidental Spy when an orderly led me to a room just outside of the waiting room where I could lie down on a gurney. They watch TV very quietly since it's all in English and they read the subtitles, I guess. Stina got to dozing on my shoulder after I made her tell me a story promising that all would be well. She reassured me with a story about how my appendicitis was actually a bizarre pregnancy that would have to be resolved after 9 months of pain and a c-section. She could have been more reassuring. I rubbed my belly and jiggled it, and this seemed to ease the pain. I've noticed in past circumstances that showers tend to ease the pain as well. I hypothesize that the nerve endings start to pay attention to the surface sensations and distract my brain from the pain a little bit. The doctor arrived at I don't know what time. As soon as he entered the room, my pain eased a little more. There was something very healing about this humorful Swedish doctor. He felt my belly, listened to my description of the pain and my medical history, and joked about the U2 concert. He told me that the symptoms all added up to a minor flare-up. He said they used to take out all appendices, and he could do it "snip, snip in 10 minutes" but then I might have bowel problems tomorrow or in 20 years. So he came up with two recommendations: 1. He could keep me overnight for observation or 2. He could send me on my way. I said our travel was flexible, and so a day or two, if he recommended it, would be fine... would it cost much? His response... he didn't know. From this point on, I felt very much like I was in an American hospital. Nobody had any inkling how much anything cost. He said he would ask the secretary, but he couldn't imagine it was more than a couple hundred kröner. He left and came back... she didn't know either... she'd tried to find the answer on the internet, too, but couldn't. He said, though, that he would make sure I was sent away with some antibiotics and painkillers as a gift from Gothenburg. That was a funny phrase to me that he mentioned several times. He said "I can't stand here and say Sweden is perfect, it won't cost you anything, but I think so." Then he sat in a chair and chatted with us for a bit, which was really nice to see. Hospitals often make me feel harried and hurried, but I felt like if something was wrong, I would have an opportunity to tell him. I think that's a rare gift that some doctors possess. I've seen it before, and it's one of the best feelings I can get from a doctor. We told him about hitchhiking and I mentioned that if he said we should not do it, we wouldn't. He didn't say that. He poked me once to prove a point... as if to say, "I know this hurts, but it doesn't hurt SOOOO much". He was right, of course.
My mother keeps saying I have a high tolerance for pain... but I wonder if maybe I have a low tolerance. We keep hearing stories now about people having their appendices taken out, but doctors don't want to take mine out.
Later a nurse came in and gave me morphine. I felt mostly better already, but wasn't awake enough to protest.
To conclude, I spent the night in the ward. Stina also got a bed to sleep on. The nurses were very nice, one of them even promised to find out how much a night in the hospital would cost. She never did. I felt much better in the morning, ate breakfast, saw the doctor one more time, took a shower, got antibiotics ("a present from the hospital"), and checked out with the nurse. I have no idea if they're just going to charge my Visa card for the further expenses or if everything was covered in that initial 2898 kröner.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Hanging in Everett...and in the hospital!
I'll get to that hospital part, but I'll start with some of the other activities we've been up to. Last weekend was very busy. We volunteered at the Folklife Festival on Friday, the 22nd, all morning. We were asked to come at 8:45am to help at a pre-festival event for sponsors. We showed up, bleary-eyed and tailless, to find out they didn't really need us at that event so we could go to festival services and see what else they needed us to do. At least we found a good, free parking space since we got there that early. We were then sent over to an information booth to help run it, and then we were greeters. It was fun to see the festival from the very beginning, but my lord we were tired by the time we left.
That evening we baby-sat one of our favorite two year olds and had so much fun with her that she didn't want to go to bed. She made us feel loved. When we got "home" to our friends' apartment we checked our email and found out our friends were returning Saturday afternoon, not Sunday like we had expected. This threw us into a frenzy of tidying and trying to figure out how we would handle the next day. See, we were both scheduled to work a one-day, all-day project to help convert WaMu to Chase, but now we needed to pick up Jesse and Larisa and their baby in the middle of that. Brendan left a message for our team lead and we just hoped we could work out some way to do everything.
Saturday morning we both showed up for the job, and our team lead said the higher-ups hadn't yet figured out what to do about our predicament. We hoped that Brendan could start the job, then leave to pick up our friends, then come back to finish the job. Soon, though, we got word that they didn't want him to start the project at all if he couldn't stay for the whole thing. So Brendan took off to finish up a bit more cleaning, and I stayed to work for the day. We divided it that way because I don't know how to drive a stick shift (a sad fact that must someday be remedied), so I couldn't be the one to pick them up.
The work was easy and boring because it involved a lot of sitting around and waiting for things to be tested, but the people I was working with were nice and I got to tell them about this very blog. Jesse and Larisa and Ciprian returned safely from Romania/Italy and we visited with them that evening for a little while before they crashed into bed. We stayed that night at their place still, and all of us went to a birthday party on Sunday for our friends' one year old. Sunday was a beautiful day to be outdoors celebrating life. Even the butterfly balloon wanted to play, so it took off and we watched it fly far away. Can you see it? It quickly became a speck.
We also spent Sunday night at Jesse's and Larisa's and on Monday my sister Amelie picked us up and the three of us went back to Folklife, this time to enjoy from the spectator end. We had lunch first at Bamboo Garden, then wandered over to the storytelling room, then to hear a fiddle/guitar band, then over to the hospitality room. The hospitality room was set up for volunteers and performers, for them to hang out and get free beverages and snacks. Since we had been volunteers, we had the special purple buttons that got us and a guest in. Later we met up with Adam and Lena and baby and co. and listened to ska music, amongst other things. Brendan and I went to the front of the stage where the ska bands were playing and joined in the rhythmic jump-dancing. It was great exercise.
After Folklife we went back to Jesse's and Larisa's and loaded all our stuff into Amelie's car since we planned to spend the rest of the week at her place in Everett. On Tuesday Brendan spent some time sorting through Magic cards, working on his deck for the Grand Prix, then we headed over to my parents' place to hang out. Brendan had started to feel bad, the bad-abdominal-pain-type-bad, but when we got to my parents' he took some Advil and felt well enough a little later to eat dinner.
On Wednesday Brendan felt sick all day. It was the same kind of pain he'd had the year before, but since it had gone away then, we figured it would go away again. I bought him some popsicles and Gatorade so he wouldn't get dehydrated, them Amelie and I went hiking to Explorer Falls. If I'd known what was going on in his body, I probably wouldn't have left. As it was, though, Amelie and I got to see this (photo found here on flickr):
On Thursday Brendan still felt ill, but he thought it was getting a little better. I had lunch with my friend Miranda and on my way, walking to meet her, this little girl that hangs out in Amelie's neighborhood approached me. This is the conversation we had while I was walking:
First the girl says hi to a passing car. I assume she knows the driver. Then she crosses the street (on rollerblades) and approaches me, followed by her friend who remains silent.
Girl: Hi!
Me: Hello.
Girl: Are you in 8th grade?
Me: No, I graduated from high school a long time ago.
Girl: Oh. Are you in college?
Me: No, I graduated from college too. I'm 27.
Girl: Oh. You look like an 8th grader.
Me: (Laughing) Well, that's good right? It means when I'm 40 I'll look 20.
Girl: Yeah.
Me: What grade are you in?
Girl: 6th.
Me: Are you out of school already? (It was 11:30am and I wondered why she wasn't in school. She misinterpreted my question)
Girl: No, we still have two weeks before summer break.
Me: Ah. I bet you're excited.
Girl: Yeah. (Pause) Watch out, there's a dead bird ahead.
Me: Yeah, I know. I saw it the other day.
Girl: The crows keep picking at it. We wanted to bury it, but we don't have a place.
Me: Oh, well, that's nice of you.
Girl: We throw rocks at the crows when we see them by it.
Me: I don't see it anymore.
Girl: It's in the grass. The crows keep moving it from the grass to the sidewalk and back to the grass.
Me: Oh. (Pause) Yeah, now I see it.
Girl: Well, bye!
Me: Bye.
Girl: Have a great day!
Me: Okay, thanks. You too.
As she was saying goodbye, a car passed and as she and her friend turned around, I heard her say to her friend "Shoot! I missed saying hi to that car!"
It was a bizarre exchange.
Later that day I left Brendan watching movies at Amelie's place, and I went over to my parents' for dinner. Amelie came over too and then she and I went back to her place. Brendan was just finishing a movie and was planning on going to sleep when I felt his forehead. It was incredibly hot. Amelie got a thermometer out and his temperature checked in at 102.8. I didn't think it could be right. Brendan didn't feel like he had a fever and that just seemed so high. So I shook the thermometer down and checked again. Still 102.8. That called for a mom's opinion, so I called mine. She said she thought we should go to the hospital. Brendan agreed, so off we went to the emergency room at the Colby Campus of Providence Hospital. This was at 10pm.
He was triaged almost immediately and taken back to a shared room. Then we had to wait for a little while before a nurse came and got him going on fluids and took a urine sample and a blood sample. Another hour or so after that a doctor came to see us and when he heard how Brendan was feeling and did a brief exam he said he was pretty sure it was appendicitis, but he wanted to run a CAT scan. Within an hour that happened, then another hour or so later we got the results and it was indeed appendicitis. Surprisingly to us, though, it also showed that the appendix had already ruptured, and had an abscess, so instead of operating right away, they wanted to start Brendan on a course of antibiotics to make the inflammation go down.
That's when Brendan got moved to what's known as the "penthouse," or the 8th (and top) floor of the hospital, to his very own room. And that's where we are still. Brendan is on antibiotics and painkillers, and we are still in the "watch and wait" phase of things. If he responds well to the antibiotics (and he seems to be doing so), he will probably be released tomorrow (Sunday) and can schedule an appendectomy for a later date. This is the preferred course of action, because they want the inflammation to go down so the surgery won't have to be very invasive. If things don't go well and the antibiotics don't keep working, they may have to do the appendectomy now anyway. The more time we spend here, though, the less likely it seems that will happen.
The next time a doctor comes to visit, we'll ask if it's okay for Brendan to travel by bus to Wisconsin. We're scheduled to leave Monday, but we'll probably postpone by at least a day or two so we can see how he handles being out of the hospital. If all goes well, though, we'll carry forth with our travels and take a lot of documentation of this hospital visit with us in case his appendix freaks out again while we're in Europe. Ideally it will stay calm until we get back and can schedule the appendectomy to take place here at Providence. We've met a lot of doctors and nurses here and everyone is very capable and kind.
In other news, have you heard our latest life plan? The more I was applying for jobs and trying to make myself seem appealing to employers, the more I wanted to be doing something else. Our dream of opening a store someday began to sound more and more like something we should do now, rather than waiting. So that's what we're going to try and do. I don't know exactly when, because we're still not sure how long we'll be overseas, or how, but we're both really excited about this. It probably means delaying our dream to buy a house, but it will firmly establish us in the Seattle area. We're determined and intelligent people, so I believe we can do it no matter how hard it seems at the outset.
That's the scoop, folks. Never a dull moment.
That evening we baby-sat one of our favorite two year olds and had so much fun with her that she didn't want to go to bed. She made us feel loved. When we got "home" to our friends' apartment we checked our email and found out our friends were returning Saturday afternoon, not Sunday like we had expected. This threw us into a frenzy of tidying and trying to figure out how we would handle the next day. See, we were both scheduled to work a one-day, all-day project to help convert WaMu to Chase, but now we needed to pick up Jesse and Larisa and their baby in the middle of that. Brendan left a message for our team lead and we just hoped we could work out some way to do everything.
Saturday morning we both showed up for the job, and our team lead said the higher-ups hadn't yet figured out what to do about our predicament. We hoped that Brendan could start the job, then leave to pick up our friends, then come back to finish the job. Soon, though, we got word that they didn't want him to start the project at all if he couldn't stay for the whole thing. So Brendan took off to finish up a bit more cleaning, and I stayed to work for the day. We divided it that way because I don't know how to drive a stick shift (a sad fact that must someday be remedied), so I couldn't be the one to pick them up.
The work was easy and boring because it involved a lot of sitting around and waiting for things to be tested, but the people I was working with were nice and I got to tell them about this very blog. Jesse and Larisa and Ciprian returned safely from Romania/Italy and we visited with them that evening for a little while before they crashed into bed. We stayed that night at their place still, and all of us went to a birthday party on Sunday for our friends' one year old. Sunday was a beautiful day to be outdoors celebrating life. Even the butterfly balloon wanted to play, so it took off and we watched it fly far away. Can you see it? It quickly became a speck.
We also spent Sunday night at Jesse's and Larisa's and on Monday my sister Amelie picked us up and the three of us went back to Folklife, this time to enjoy from the spectator end. We had lunch first at Bamboo Garden, then wandered over to the storytelling room, then to hear a fiddle/guitar band, then over to the hospitality room. The hospitality room was set up for volunteers and performers, for them to hang out and get free beverages and snacks. Since we had been volunteers, we had the special purple buttons that got us and a guest in. Later we met up with Adam and Lena and baby and co. and listened to ska music, amongst other things. Brendan and I went to the front of the stage where the ska bands were playing and joined in the rhythmic jump-dancing. It was great exercise.After Folklife we went back to Jesse's and Larisa's and loaded all our stuff into Amelie's car since we planned to spend the rest of the week at her place in Everett. On Tuesday Brendan spent some time sorting through Magic cards, working on his deck for the Grand Prix, then we headed over to my parents' place to hang out. Brendan had started to feel bad, the bad-abdominal-pain-type-bad, but when we got to my parents' he took some Advil and felt well enough a little later to eat dinner.
On Wednesday Brendan felt sick all day. It was the same kind of pain he'd had the year before, but since it had gone away then, we figured it would go away again. I bought him some popsicles and Gatorade so he wouldn't get dehydrated, them Amelie and I went hiking to Explorer Falls. If I'd known what was going on in his body, I probably wouldn't have left. As it was, though, Amelie and I got to see this (photo found here on flickr):
On Thursday Brendan still felt ill, but he thought it was getting a little better. I had lunch with my friend Miranda and on my way, walking to meet her, this little girl that hangs out in Amelie's neighborhood approached me. This is the conversation we had while I was walking:First the girl says hi to a passing car. I assume she knows the driver. Then she crosses the street (on rollerblades) and approaches me, followed by her friend who remains silent.
Girl: Hi!
Me: Hello.
Girl: Are you in 8th grade?
Me: No, I graduated from high school a long time ago.
Girl: Oh. Are you in college?
Me: No, I graduated from college too. I'm 27.
Girl: Oh. You look like an 8th grader.
Me: (Laughing) Well, that's good right? It means when I'm 40 I'll look 20.
Girl: Yeah.
Me: What grade are you in?
Girl: 6th.
Me: Are you out of school already? (It was 11:30am and I wondered why she wasn't in school. She misinterpreted my question)
Girl: No, we still have two weeks before summer break.
Me: Ah. I bet you're excited.
Girl: Yeah. (Pause) Watch out, there's a dead bird ahead.
Me: Yeah, I know. I saw it the other day.
Girl: The crows keep picking at it. We wanted to bury it, but we don't have a place.
Me: Oh, well, that's nice of you.
Girl: We throw rocks at the crows when we see them by it.
Me: I don't see it anymore.
Girl: It's in the grass. The crows keep moving it from the grass to the sidewalk and back to the grass.
Me: Oh. (Pause) Yeah, now I see it.
Girl: Well, bye!
Me: Bye.
Girl: Have a great day!
Me: Okay, thanks. You too.
As she was saying goodbye, a car passed and as she and her friend turned around, I heard her say to her friend "Shoot! I missed saying hi to that car!"
It was a bizarre exchange.
Later that day I left Brendan watching movies at Amelie's place, and I went over to my parents' for dinner. Amelie came over too and then she and I went back to her place. Brendan was just finishing a movie and was planning on going to sleep when I felt his forehead. It was incredibly hot. Amelie got a thermometer out and his temperature checked in at 102.8. I didn't think it could be right. Brendan didn't feel like he had a fever and that just seemed so high. So I shook the thermometer down and checked again. Still 102.8. That called for a mom's opinion, so I called mine. She said she thought we should go to the hospital. Brendan agreed, so off we went to the emergency room at the Colby Campus of Providence Hospital. This was at 10pm.
He was triaged almost immediately and taken back to a shared room. Then we had to wait for a little while before a nurse came and got him going on fluids and took a urine sample and a blood sample. Another hour or so after that a doctor came to see us and when he heard how Brendan was feeling and did a brief exam he said he was pretty sure it was appendicitis, but he wanted to run a CAT scan. Within an hour that happened, then another hour or so later we got the results and it was indeed appendicitis. Surprisingly to us, though, it also showed that the appendix had already ruptured, and had an abscess, so instead of operating right away, they wanted to start Brendan on a course of antibiotics to make the inflammation go down.
That's when Brendan got moved to what's known as the "penthouse," or the 8th (and top) floor of the hospital, to his very own room. And that's where we are still. Brendan is on antibiotics and painkillers, and we are still in the "watch and wait" phase of things. If he responds well to the antibiotics (and he seems to be doing so), he will probably be released tomorrow (Sunday) and can schedule an appendectomy for a later date. This is the preferred course of action, because they want the inflammation to go down so the surgery won't have to be very invasive. If things don't go well and the antibiotics don't keep working, they may have to do the appendectomy now anyway. The more time we spend here, though, the less likely it seems that will happen.
The next time a doctor comes to visit, we'll ask if it's okay for Brendan to travel by bus to Wisconsin. We're scheduled to leave Monday, but we'll probably postpone by at least a day or two so we can see how he handles being out of the hospital. If all goes well, though, we'll carry forth with our travels and take a lot of documentation of this hospital visit with us in case his appendix freaks out again while we're in Europe. Ideally it will stay calm until we get back and can schedule the appendectomy to take place here at Providence. We've met a lot of doctors and nurses here and everyone is very capable and kind.
In other news, have you heard our latest life plan? The more I was applying for jobs and trying to make myself seem appealing to employers, the more I wanted to be doing something else. Our dream of opening a store someday began to sound more and more like something we should do now, rather than waiting. So that's what we're going to try and do. I don't know exactly when, because we're still not sure how long we'll be overseas, or how, but we're both really excited about this. It probably means delaying our dream to buy a house, but it will firmly establish us in the Seattle area. We're determined and intelligent people, so I believe we can do it no matter how hard it seems at the outset.
That's the scoop, folks. Never a dull moment.
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