Our "summer" vacation, aka the 2006 P-neumonia tour

Bernd and I have not been to the states together in 3 years, and it was just time to go. The last 2 years when I have gone in the fall, I have ended up sick, usually with something bronchial. This year I went to the doctor at the beginning of October to talk this situation over, and he prescribed some antihistamines to take a few days before leaving, and also gave me some super “boost your immune system” vitamins and minerals. Right after seeing the doctor Bernd got sick and then I got sick, of course with the yearly fall bronchitis, but this year I was doing the happy dance since it would be over with by the time we went to the states. So we were both sick for awhile, but got better, packed, and headed out for Boston via Amsterdam on October 30th. I was really happy to be going, was feeling fine, and could hardly wait to see New England for the first time. We were headed for Maine to see friends (Owen, Jeannie, and Neola from Sacramento), and then to Vermont to see more friends (Liz, Cathy, Flo, Bob Jim and Jer). Then the plan was to go back to Boston for a couple of nights, make a tour of Boston, and then fly on to Chicago, meet Liz from Wisconsin at O’Hare, then drive on to Indianapolis to see my family at my brother’s house. Best laid plans.

So we leave around noon from Munich to fly to Amsterdam. I noticed a bit of a backache on the flight, but no huge deal as I figured I had just tweaked something with my heavy backpack or purse. We got to Amsterdam without problems but had to change terminals which takes awhile. I was suddenly dying of thirst and HAD to get something to drink. Our flight was leaving earlier than our tickets said, but in spite of this I had to run for a Coke. I slammed down the coke and noticed that I was feeling a little under the weather, but thought it was just the backache. So we climbed on the flight to Boston, and within the first hour I would estimate that I had the highest fever of my adult life. On fire type of fever. We piled the blankets on since I started out chilling, took some Ibuprofen and waited. Nothing happened except I got hotter and hotter. I was actually thinking that I might start to convulse or hallucinate and maybe I should tell Bernd to get ready. I hurt from head to toe from the fever, and by some miracle actually had 2 Tylenol 3’s in my purse. Thank you my Canadian friends who can score this stuff over the counter. I took these additional 2 pills and lo and behold my fever seemed to break, BUT the pain in my back seemed to get worse and worse and now was radiating around to my front and it hurt like hell to breathe. I was sitting there worried about Bernd having to carry everything off the plane because I could not imagine lifting a thing. A flight attendant (KLM/Northwest, all really nice flight attendants) came by and we asked if there was maybe a doctor at the airport in Boston. She said they could call for one but suggested in the meantime that she ask if a doctor was on board and see if there was a response. A doctor and an ER nurse showed up in the back of the plane, talked it all over with me, decided I was still hot from the fever (though I was feeling cooler) and said that I should really get to a doctor as soon as we got to Boston. We landed shortly thereafter and thank goodness because I was feeling worse and worse. The airline peeps came with a wheelchair, which normally would have been hideously embarrassing, but I felt too rotten to even care. At this point I was shaking all over from head to toe, could not figure out why, and made it through immigration and customs in record time. The immigration guy asked if he should call for help. I was so bad at this point that we said ok go ahead. Paramedics showed up within what seemed to be about 5 minutes, and they whisked me off to Massachusetts General Hospital ER. Now my poor German husband who thank GOD is super fluent in English at this point arranged with customs to hold our luggage while we went to the hospital. After a chest X-ray and blood work they determined I had pneumonia, and would have to spend the night there. Not good, but I had to agree that moving to anywhere else would be next to impossible since I was in serious pain whenever I had to breathe (which was pretty much constant). Bernd took a taxi back to the airport, got our luggage, got a rental car, came back to the hospital, dropped off my luggage and went on a hunt for a hotel. There was a Holiday in right next door, but the rooms were $250/night, so he drove way out of Boston in order to find something more reasonable. Nurses later told us that the Holiday Inn is totally taking advantage of their proximity to the hospital. Baah to you Holiday Inn.

So I sit up all night in the hospital in the observation unit, unable to breathe very well, or sleep because alarms were going off all night long because there was not enough oxygen in my blood and my pulse was racing. The ER doctor had told me that they would do whatever was needed to manage the pain because it was important that I cough. After 2 shots of morphine and 1 shot of Dilauded (sp?) I was still in too much pain to sleep, and I never did cough then or since.

Next morning we tried to convince the doctors that we had to go. Ha Ha Ha. No chance unless we went to Maine by ambulance, and then to another hospital. My 2nd chest X-ray showed that the pneumonia was bigger and my white count was higher, and there was no way they were going to set me free. I was moved to a regular room and out of the observation unit. They observed that I was really sick and that’s about all I can say.

At this point I must say that even though I will never know who these people were, a couple stepped up to help us starting in the ER when they got the idea that we had just flown in from Europe, had no idea what to do, etc….they offered help and their cell phone, and helped Bernd find a hotel. Then the lady turned up on the observation unit as they had admitted her mom with a stroke, and offered more help as we went along. So kind. The doctors were also kind to a fault and the nurses were also terrific. I have never really experienced nurses who seemed to think independently….they would come in my room, check the monitors and when they realized I was failing everything they would actually stand there together and try to come up with solutions to help me. A very pretty and kind doctor came at one point to draw arterial blood, was honest about how much it was going to hurt, and then thankfully it was not nearly as bad as she said it would be. I appreciated that they talked to me as if I had some sense and kept me informed as we went along. Everyone was kind and friendly and informative.

So in my new room I’m laying next to Marge, an ex-jazz singer with a blood clot. She was old and hard of hearing and at times was so hard on the nurses that it just made me chuckle. She fired one while I was there. As sick and drugged as I was I did not seem to miss much. My nurses on this unit were nice beyond belief and everyone seemed to have some connection to Germany in one-way or another. Kind of amazing. I learned the following day that I had landed in the hospital which is the teaching hospital for Harvard. A girl could do worse. The doctors (and I saw LOTS of them since all the students wanted to hear my pneumonia) were unbelievable. I think they must be successfully teaching bedside manner at Harvard these days. And the guys were all handsome and the girls were all cute. But my favorite person of all was my nurse Michele. So cute, a newlywed, and had time to talk since she only had me and one other guy for a patient for the 10 hours she was there. She printed pictures of my dog that my friend Mia had posted for me on my dog blog, along with letters from the dog. It really made me feel better to see his cute face and to read that he was having a better vacation than I was.

Again we tried the “set me FREE” theme and again it did no good at all. Michele said that to even get on the unit that I was on that you had to be pretty darned sick. I felt honored but still wanted out despite the fact that I still felt like I’d been hit by a truck. They said there was no chance until my white count was trending downward toward normal. They told me normal is 4-11 and mine was 25 the first day then 26 the second. So I was still trapped. Bernd was trapped too and it took us a long time to figure out to ask for a social worker to help with the hotel situation. It finally hit us and she was also a lot of help.

In the meantime we were of course in touch with our friends in Maine and Vermont, and since we had been set back 2 days already, the trip to Vermont was looking bad. We HAD to get to Maine as a priority since my best friend in America was there waiting for us. She had also taken a little trip to an Emergency Room in Maine with bronchitis and the inability to stop coughing. They said she was having bronchial spasms. We later agreed that traveling in October and November is a bad idea for us as she was also eventually sick with me last year as well when I came to the states. Sheesh. The friends we were meeting in Vermont were SO kind about our canceling, but this was in the end maybe not such a bad idea as one of the men was in horrible pain himself from a new case of shingles, and the other man was having skin coming off problems from a medication he was on, so 2 out of the 5 of these people were also not doing that well. The person who was renting us her house in Vermont actually allowed the cancellation without penalty. Miracle.

After 3 nights in Mass General my white count finally started to cooperate, and though they were enjoying our company a bit much for our taste, they agreed to let me go. I promised to do nothing but sit on the sofa in Maine. So we were off.

We arrived in Maine without problems, and stayed a few days longer than was originally planned. Our hosts Owen and Jeannie were kind to put up with all the illness that showed up on their doorstep, and basically let me do nothing for our time there. I ventured out a time or two for short periods, but found that pneumonia gives all new meaning to tired. Hit by a truck tired would be the best description. At least Bernd got to see a little of Maine, and we happily discovered what must be one of the best stores in all of America…a place called Reny’s. Discount everything. Columbia, LL Bean tote bags without the LL Bean tags on them, shoes, boots, snowshoes, etc….and despite my tiredness I managed to make a dent such that after Maine our luggage was already bursting. Thank you Neola for dragging me out. I had no appetite and everything tasted like metal thanks to the antibiotics, but thank you God, lobster tasted just fine. And in Maine you can order it sautéed so you don’t even have to bother tearing the lobster apart. I would not have had the energy. Jeannie and Neola cooked an early Thanksgiving dinner which was fantastic. Sadly, the number one thing that tasted horrible to me was poultry, but I liked seeing the turkey anyway and it was nice that everyone else enjoyed it. The part of Maine I saw looked terrific and I see why people want to live there…coastal Maine is the bomb.

We eventually made our way back to Boston via LL Bean in Freeport. I had been vibrating for LL Bean for literally months, had poured over the catalog also for months. I had orders for friends in Germany to fetch, and managed to do this with help from a salesman, but found that NOTHING compares to Reny’s in Camden, Maine. LL Bean was pretty much on the expensive side, did not have sizes and colors that I wanted, and in the end I would suggest using the LL. Bean catalog or go to Reny’s instead.

In Boston we had a good hotel and shuttle service to the train system. We made our way out one day for a little bit of a tour, saw some of downtown Boston, a corner of Harvard and a corner of MIT, scored some stuff in the bookstores, and headed back for naps. Ah well. Boston looked way interesting from my window on the train.

On to Indianapolis via Chicago. Cancelled the meeting with Liz due to being pretty much under the weather and agreed she needs to come to Europe. We drove to Indy and had a fun few days with my family. My parents came from Tennessee for a few days, and we had a great time with my nieces. They are adorable and fun to be with. Highlights in Indy were that Bernd went to his first football game, the Colts vs. the Buffalo Bills. The Colts thankfully won but barely and it was apparently an exciting game. Then for me we just by accident had seen right before we left Germany that James Taylor would be playing in Indy the night before we went home. Scored tickets…very expensive tickets because they were almost sold out. Our seats turned out to be just about directly in his face, and it was just a great big deal for me to have seen and heard the music that has run through the fabric of my life. I was moved to tears a couple of times. It also made me miss my country pretty badly. What really made us laugh was the advanced age of the crowd. Bernd’s comment was “the next time we want to go to a concert, why don’t we just go visit a nursing home?” Uggh, so true. It was a baby boomer crowd all the way and how we all got so old suddenly is a mystery! There were some younger people there, but they appeared to be with their grandparents! Painful. Anyway, great show, great music, great storytelling, and you should never miss an opportunity to see James Taylor. I had seen him once before around age 19 in the 1970’s and we both really looked significantly different as did the crowd in general.

The next day back to Munich via Amsterdam. The KLM 747 was as comfortable a seat as you will ever find in coach, but for a girl trying to get over pneumonia, losing a night’s sleep was not ideal. I could hardly get to bed fast enough but felt better after a 12-hour sleep. It was great to have the dog back and thanks Mia for what seems to have been a wonderful vacation for him. Lots of Uben vacation photos are at http://www.doghotel.blogspot.com/ There are so many photos that you have to click backwards into the archives to see them all. Mia is a good photographer and there are some cool shots.

No time to rest, had to do laundry (thanks to jet lag, a lot got done in the middle of the night), repack and jump back in the car and point it toward the South of France. This sounds more exotic than it really is as this trip is all about closing up our rental houses for the winter, and mostly involves work. We went via Gallarate, Italy (near Milan) to break up the trip, and got to see our friends Donna and Ted who are living there somewhat temporarily. Italy is not agreeing with them as planned. I can see why….I personally think that Italy is the wild, wild west in the middle of Europe. It is just too chaotic and nutty for my taste, but I do understand the appeal of Tuscany, Florence, etc. I would advise to stay off the roads or just prepare for chaos. We had a nice but all too short visit there and arrived in France yesterday. Thankfully it is warm here and so the house heated up quickly. We’ve seen some neighbors and our friend Sascha in less than 24 hours. For those of you reading this who have been here, Didier (from the restaurant in Montagnac) lost his mother recently and we hear is so devastated that he has not been to work in 3 months and is having a terribly hard time with the loss. Very sad.

I”ll post pictures when we get home next week. I stupidly forgot my camera so have no photos yet to go with this story, but eventually….

Things I learned from our “summer” vacation (we actually could not go until fall because Bernd was working waaay too much)

1. Pneumonia hurts like hell and is a lot like being hit by a semi…I get why old people die from it
2. Mass General is a good place to be if you are really sick and it is good to have Mass General nurses and Harvard doctors on your side
3. I’m lucky to have a husband who rolls with the punches (despite some initial crabbiness he was a good sport overall)
4. I'm lucky to have good friends who are willing to help by waiting on me and by letting me just lay on their sofa
5. I’m lucky to have lots of understanding friends, none of whom got one bit mad by cancellations
6. I’m lucky to have a family who immediately offered to help with the medical bills (bound to be huge) if our German insurance will not do a good job of paying
7. I have the two cutest nieces in the world and their mother is the greatest coupon clipper of all time. My brother tolerates a lot of pink in his life.
8. I still love James Taylor
9. I miss my country
10. You can get lucky and get a comfortable seat in coach
11. My dog can survive 2 weeks without us (I’d have never thunk it)
12. My friend and her dog are great dogsitters
13. Things go better politically when I’m back in the homeland. It did my heart good to see the Democrats take back control of the House and Senate, and to see Rummy go. Please rise to the occasion Democrats.
14. It is great to be home, even if home is in a foreign country

And that’s our “summer” vacation. I shook hands with Neola and we agreed to pick another time of year to meet in America from now on. October and November don’t seem to be working all that well for us and our health just can’t take it.