We interrupt this already irregularly scheduled program for an even more irregular update. As you might be able to guess from the title of this entry, I had the distinct “pleasure” of having my appendix removed while Laura and I were traveling in southern Spain. It was a painful, stressful, frustrating, confusing, and at times downright scary experience, especially given that we don’t speak a lick of Spanish. As it turns out, though, it was also one of the most real experiences we’ve had while traveling this year, and it reminded us a thing or two about the unpredictability of life and importance of going with the flow, about the benefits of having an amazing travel companion, and most importantly, about the universal kindness of strangers. It was quite the detour on our year-long adventure.
Symptoms
;)
The calm before the storm (in my belly)I won’t bore you with all of the gory details of the hours leading up to my surgery, but suffice it to say it was less than fun. I woke up a week ago Sunday feeling pretty “off”, and I thought I’d probably picked up some kind of GI bug. The burning and discomfort in my gut came and went that day, and even though we didn’t do much – I mainly just lounged around our room in the Parador de Mazagón where were staying – I felt good enough to take a long walk on the beach with Laura that afternoon and have dinner at the hotel.
Sunday night was when things got really uncomfortable. I was awake literally all night just tossing and turning from one side to the other, hopelessly trying to find a position that made my gut feel better. I was still thinking it was just a bad bug or maybe gas or an obstruction of some kind (which also wouldn’t have been good), but the pain had started moving mainly to my lower right abdomen, and I started to worry. Finally around 6:30AM, I started Googling “abdominal pain” and “appendicitis”, and when I read that you should see a doctor after only four hours of moderate abdominal pain (mine felt way worse than moderate), I realized it was time to do something other than pop a few Cipro and hope for the best.
I woke poor Laura up (she hadn’t slept much with all my tossing and turning), told her the scoop, and we dragged ourselves down to the lobby of the parador. After a quick call to my parents to let them know what was going on, I spoke with Cristina, the night manager on duty at the front desk. I told her my situation, and amazingly, rather than calling us a taxi (or an ambulance), she offered to drive us both to the nearby town of Mazagón, where there was a medical clinic that was open 24/7 (or so we thought). Gracias, kind stranger numero uno!
We drove to the clinic in Mazagón, only to discover that it wouldn’t open for another hour. I definitely didn’t want to wait that long, so Cristina was nice enough to call a local taxi to take us to a real hospital, let us wait in her car (it was really cold that morning) for fifteen minutes, then talk to the cab driver to tell him where to take us. We were off to nearby Huelva, the closest town big enough to have a full-fledged hospital, about twenty-five minutes from our hotel.
Diagnosis
When we arrived at Hospital Juan Ramón Jimánez in Huelva, things started to get interesting. Still in pain (me) and stressed (Laura), we checked into the emergency room, and we were shocked to discover that no one there spoke any English. We know we can’t count on English being spoken in a foreign country, but it seemed strange that there wasn’t someone who spoke English in a 600-bed hospital, and they didn’t even have any sort of interpreter service for non-Spanish speakers. We started to freak out a little (ok, maybe more than a little), but what could we do? I was examined by a nurse who did speak a little English, then was told to sit in the waiting area until a doctor could give me a more thorough exam.
Unfortunately, my body wasn’t going to wait; I got cold sweats and dizziness and nearly passed out in the waiting area, and I ended up on my back on the floor with my feet up on the chairs while Laura frantically searched for someone to help. The staff finally took notice, got me on a gurney, and wheeled me into an exam room, where another two or three doctors and nurses poked and prodded me, asking all kinds of questions in Spanish, which of course I couldn’t answer. Another nurse stepped in with some English skills (Federico), and he turned out to be our kind stranger number two. We got the point across that I’d been having moderate-to-severe abdominal pain for around 24 hours.
After taking some blood for the standard tests, hooking me up to IV fluids (I hadn’t really eaten anything in twelve hours or so), and taking a couple of abdominal X-rays, I was parked in the patient “holding pen,” as we came to call it. It was possibly the most miserable two hours of my entire year. In constant pain, I was literally counting the minutes until someone came to tell me what was going on (which I wouldn’t be able understand anyway). I would promise myself that I wouldn’t look at my watch for 5-10 minutes, then when I finally did look, only a minute or two had passed. The nurses wouldn’t let Laura stay with me – they kept yelling at her in Spanish to go wait in the family waiting area, before going back to playing mahjong on their computer – but she kept making her way back through security to check on me. Every time we wanted to ask a question, she had to race around looking for Federico (who was of course working on other patients) or someone else who spoke a little English to try and mediate the conversation. It was a nightmare, and I can only imagine how Laura felt trying to keep it together while we both waited for some answers.
;)
Waiting for el doctor to cut the exploding appendix out of my bellyThe blood work was supposed to take “about an hour”, but it ended up being more like three hours before we finally pushed them enough to tell us what was going on. We weren’t just tired of waiting with no information; we were also worried about my appendix bursting in my gut! Finally, a doctor (my surgeon, I later deduced) took me into an exam room, poked at my gut again (ouch!), showed me my blood work (normal, I also never had a fever, which was strange), and managed to communicate that she still thought it was appendicitis and that I needed to have it removed. Glory be to God! I just wanted the burning pain to go away, so I was relieved, but I couldn’t really ask any questions – simple things like “when will the surgery take place?”, “what technique will you use (standard incision, laproscopy)?”, “what are the risks?”, etc. I changed into the blue patient jammies they gave me, and they wheeled me up to… a normal hospital room.
What? I thought I was having emergency surgery? Evidently, there were others with more emergent surgical needs, so I had to wait a few more hours. Laura eventually joined me after assuming that I was headed straight to the OR, and then running around all over the hospital trying to figure out where I was when she realized I wasn’t in surgery yet. (Her side of this story is so stressful that I almost wish we’d written this story in parallel… I love her madly for the crap she had to deal with that day and in the days that followed). It was waiting time again, but at least pain meds were administered (thank you!), and at 6PM sharp I was wheeled down to the OR. After signing a couple of release forms (again, entirely in Spanish), I was prepped for surgery, put on the operating table, gassed into fuzzy oblivion, and my now-gangrenous (but thankfully not ruptured) appendix was removed.
Recovery
Laura met me in the OR recovery room, and before long I was wheeled back to my room. The first night is a bit of a blur because I was still under the influence of the general anesthesia, and I still had some pretty nice pain medication mixed in with my IV fluids. Laura left me to sleep and headed back to the parador to start the painful process of rebooking and/or canceling many of our upcoming travel plans.
;)
You really want me to eat this crap?The rest of the week went pretty smoothly. I was only allowed to “eat” fluids on my first day post-op (a bowl of tea is NOT lunch, by the way), and the second day brought the adult hospital equivalent of baby food. It looked disgusting, but it was plentiful, hot, and all tasted surprisingly good, plus I was starving after not eating for a couple of days. I was up and walking (gingerly, slowly) the very next day after my surgery, and I took longer and longer walks around my floor with Laura as the days went on.
My story of recovery was mainly one of boredom, sleeping (on perhaps the most uncomfortable bed and pillow in the modern world), eating, reading (Lonesome Dove finally got some attention), and… playing Angry Birds on my iPhone. Laura now hates that game, and it has since been deleted from my iPhone at her request. :)
Laura’s story of my week in the hospital involves a LOT of travel planning, re-planning, researching appendectomies, emailing friends and family with updates about my condition, calling people to try and find help with our Spanish/English disconnect, and trying not to worry too much about me. She was absolutely amazing the entire week, and I feel so lucky to have her in my life.
Kind Strangers
Pain and stress aside, the most amazing thing about our week-long adventure in Huelva was, without a doubt, all of the people we met who were willing to help. They came from near and far, from all walks of life, and we will remember each and every one of them as the unsung heroes of this story.
Once my parents heard that we were having trouble with the language barrier and that I was likely going into surgery, they contacted the US Embassy in Madrid to see how they might help. Sometime during the day on Monday, Laura got a call from Dell, a good ol’ boy from Texas who’d just finished up a two-year tour in Afghanistan and was now working for the US Embassy. He offered their full support, gave us a tip on a phone-based emergency interpreter service that we could use, and assured us that we could contact him anytime if we needed more help. My parents also called my uncle Chuck, who has held numerous high-level posts within Rotary International; he contacted the Rotary chapter in Huelva (yep, they have one) and explained my situation. On Tuesday, the day after my operation, two well-dressed gentlemen from the local Rotary chapter came by to check on me. One of them was a doctor, and he immediately talked to the nurses and MA’s about my condition, my prognosis, and when I might expect to go home. Bottom line: I would spend at least three or four days in the hospital. Ugh.
There were other complete strangers who stepped up to help. Laura called the Parador de Mazagón as soon as we knew I was going to have surgery, initially to see if we (really she) could stay a few extra nights. While on the phone with them, she talked with a young employee named Pablo who spoke really great English. He offered to make a special trip all the way to the hospital in Huelva to check on us, on his own time, and on Monday afternoon while I was waiting for my surgery, he did just that! He was amazingly generous with his time, and he tried to talk to the nurses on my floor about my surgery, who my doctor was, what we should expect, etc. They weren’t very receptive to his questions (we were NOT impressed with the friendliness of most of the nurses and MA’s on my floor), but we really appreciated his willingness to try. After leaving us at the hospital, Pablo called us on our cell phone at least four more times during the week to check on us and see if we needed any more help.
Our contacts at Rotary also came through and connected us with another doctor (the sister-in-law of the gentleman who came out to visit on Tuesday) who spoke really great English. Ana Sanchez is a cardiologist at the hospital, and she went above and beyond to help us during the week. She stopped by numerous times to check on me, and she even agreed to translate the discharge letter we’d be receiving at the end of the week (for our health insurance claim), which of course would be written in Spanish. Sure enough, just after I was discharged on Friday, we got a call from our Rotary contact saying that the translated letter was waiting for us at the main Information desk. Such amazing kindness and support!
;)
Laura and I with Rosa, our ex-New Yorker guardian angelThere were so many others we met during the week who warmed our hearts and calmed our nerves with their generosity. Laura met Rosa, a housekeeper on a different floor from mine, who overheard Laura having trouble finding the Accounting office to discuss (how, she wasn’t sure) our billing questions. Rosa’s English was great – she’d spent eight years living in New York City over a decade ago – and she stepped in without hesitation to help Laura find her way and get her questions answered. She also stopped by my room three or four times on my last day in the hospital, and she, not my doctor or any of the nurses, was the one who managed to get me the antibiotics I needed before leaving, saving us another wild goose chase in Huelva trying to find a pharmacy. She was an MVP for sure!
Last but definitely not least, we met some truly beautiful, kind, thoughtful people by way of the two hospital roommates I had during the week. My first roommate was a 92-year-old man who was in the hospital for a respiratory infection of some kind. His sons and daughters visited him on a regular schedule, and he was never alone. His daughter Loli was in the room when I first arrived, and even though we quickly learned that we didn’t have a language in common, she looked after me like her own. She made sure I wasn’t cold, offered help when I needed to get into and out of bed, gave Laura home-cooked food (multiple times), and did her best to make pleasant “conversation” about our situation. Her brother watched over their father at night, spending the entire night sleeping in the most uncomfortable chair (not sofa or bed) in the world. Their whole family was so sweet, and in a “small world” moment, Laura discovered through some kind of Span-Eng-Italian that Loli’s son (or maybe nephew) was married to none other than Cristina, our driver from the Parador de Mazagón on Monday morning!
My other roommate was a jovial man named Ramon, who was in the hospital for a seemingly minor procedure (he only stayed one night). His English turned out to be decent as well, and we had some really amusing conversations (he was clearly a bit of a ham). He also helped us with a few translations with doctors and nurses. He was so sweet – he’s taking English classes now that he’s retired, and he told us as he was leaving that his next composition for class was going to be about us. “Dustin and Laura are a young couple from America. They are very much in love. They will have many, many children.” It brought us to tears, and we exchanged email addresses and told him the send us his final composition. I’m sure he’ll get an A. :)
Going With the Flow
;)
Five staples and a two-inch scar, and I’m as good as new!In the end, we managed to make it through the week, and I’m still recovering nicely and feeling almost back to normal (except for these five staples in my belly). Due in large part to the good samaritans of Huelva, we got all of the paperwork we needed from the hospital, we got all of our questions answered about my recovery, we got the medicine I needed to stave off a recurring infection, and we managed to redesign the rest of our trip yet again (Laura should consider being a travel agent when we get home). We also now have more than a dozen phone numbers of friendly locals in our Spanish cell phone contact list!
We were reminded that the universe likes to throw curve balls, and all you can do is try your best to go with the flow, put your faith in each other and the people around you, and remember to count your blessings. We could have been a thousand other places when my appendix decided to flare up that would have been a thousand times worse than southern Spain (like say, at the top of a 10,000 foot mountain), and for that we will be forever thankful.
;)
Adios, Hospital Juan Ramón Jiménez!
Dustin Frazier