ed note: not meant to be a pity post, but just filling you in if you wanted to know what we've been up to. I should be writing about our sight seeing, but sorry, you get this first!
As I put the groceries away I heard John’s car coming down the street and I rushed, or tried to rush, to get myself into bed, knowing that once the crew came home it would be harder to make my way there. And then, ah the rest of a mom whose husband is home! At last I could sleep or lie there or whatever, not thinking about when Henry would be up from his nap or when Elisabeth needed to be picked up from school. I did a lot of thinking in bed and much of it was profound, I am sure, albeit quite narcissistic.
(pictures have nothing to do with the story here--just good color!)
It is the first day back to school for Elisabeth after a week long February break. The first half of it was spent recovering from illness, illness that started during the last few days of school for Elisabeth. It was sort of a repeat from right before Christmas break, only worse.
My scariest moment through the whole ordeal, well, there were at least two. The first was last Thursday night when I heard Elisabeth up at about 1:30 AM. She wasn’t calling for me, but she has changed since her last sickness (December, right before Christmas break). She doesn’t necessarily wake me up just because she is up and uncomfortable. That is nice, but it also alarms me sometimes. This particular time I checked her temperature and it was 107 with the temporal scanning thermometer. Shocked, I checked it again and it was 106.7. I asked her where it hurt and she said her head, so I got an ice pack, and gave her Tylenol. I made her drink some water and pulled covers off of her. Still I was afraid to leave her, afraid to turn the lights off. I stepped away for a few moments to read online about fevers of 107. I was wondering if we needed to go to the Emergency Room and I didn’t even know where to go. What I read was alarming and guilt inducing. Phrases like “can endure fevers of up to 107 degrees without harm” and “fevers over 107 degrees may result in brain damage. . .” I kept moving the ice pack around her body, but it was uncomfortable for her. After a while I checked her temperature orally and it was no more than 103. After the ice pack had been off for a while I tried the temporal thermometer again and it was down to 104. But still I wondered what the temperature really was. Meanwhile I was starting to feel my body slide into fever again. John and I had sat on the couch together that evening after putting the kids to bed and I felt nearly normal, eating a piece of pizza and a few sips of beer. I thought I was on the road to recovery. But lying in bed next to Elisabeth I realized I was not out of the woods yet. I started getting up to go back to my bed and Elisabeth said, “Stay!” Oh the tug on my heart. I didn’t want to leave, but I had to sleep in my bed. I told her I needed to rest but that daddy would check on her later. Then I went back to bed and finally woke up John to tell him about the temperature. He agreed that yes, we needed to take her to the doctor tomorrow, but no, we didn’t need to go tonight. But for a long time I lay in bed thinking of those numbers, 1-0-7, 1-0-7. I pictured my daughter’s brain melting away, her mind, her precious, brilliant mind, changing to one that didn’t work quite so well, losing her ability to calculate so quickly, to read long books, to remember interesting facts she’s read in passing. I cried as I saw her taken away from me, then I thought about my brother Tim and how my mom had to lose him. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your paths.” I repeated the familiar words over and over until I fell asleep, struggling to rest in God’s care for us.
The next morning John got up to go to work. I felt awful. My shoulders ached, my head ached. I could barely lift my head. I stretched out on the bed towards his departing figure trying to get him to read my mind, “Don’t leave! Don’t go!” But I couldn’t form the words, and he was thinking that we would walk down the street to a family doctor I took Elisabeth to in December. I hadn’t told him that my friend Bettina had tried to call this same doctor once and there was no answer. But I wanted to be strong and away he went. After 30 minutes or so the kids came into my bed and we read Beatrix Potter books as Henry has been enjoying those lately. Then we headed downstairs and I drank some coffee and tried to eat some cereal, but couldn’t manage to read a book at breakfast as we normally do. Instead I set the iPad on the table and they watched favorite scenes from Toy Story I (we’d watched nearly the whole thing the night before at dinner, only that time we sat on the couch and watched it on the big computer). About 8:00 I dragged myself over to the phone to call the doctor down the street. No answer except a message saying this number was out of service. I tried to think of what to do and how I was to get us to the pediatrician that was a walk and 4 tram stops away. I called John but there was no answer, so I called Bettina, who happened to have the car that day. I felt foolish asking for help for getting to the doctor--like we should’ve planned ahead for this and had a car that I could drive so we could get to the doctor. But I guess I felt sick enough that it overrode the foolish feeling. Bettina called the pediatrician that everyone around here goes to and made an appointment for Elisabeth for 11 AM. I called John and used more than telepathy to let him know I needed him to come home. He was able to arrange his meeting with Houston so that he could carry it on by phone from our house. He arrived home around 10:00 and took Elisabeth to the doctor, while Bettina drove me to a sort of walk-in clinic.
I waited for about an hour which was pretty painful--I just wanted to lie down. I noticed that when anyone came into the waiting room they said, “Guten Tag” to everyone. Fortunately there was no handshaking, which is common practice here. Then when someone left the doctor’s office he or she said goodbye to everyone. I felt too disgusting to even manage that, I’m afraid to say. I was afraid to breathe or touch anything and spread whatever awful disease had taken over my body. Finally someone called my name and I walked towards the direction of the voice and sat down on a chair in the doctor’s office. There was a bed on one side of the room, but I sat at a chair on the other side of the desk. I was confused about where the doctor was or how many desks the doctor had. We get used to things being a certain way in the US--even if doctor’s offices are different, they usually have common elements--when you go sit in the exam room there is a sink, some supplies and a bench or bed. But here the doctor sat behind her desk and talked to me for a few moments. I had not filled out any paperwork, but had only given them my insurance card which has a chip on it so I don’t know what information they already knew about me. She instructed me to stand and take off my shirt and she listened to my chest. Then at last, oh blessed bed, I could lie down. She didn’t ask any questions about history or allergies, only asking if I was pregnant. I didn’t understand the word she used so when I asked she pointed to my stomach and said, “Baby?” I described to her my symptoms as best as I could in German. I had been looking them up on Google translate while I was waiting, and Bettina had told the receptionist some of them as well. Then after the examination the doctor wrote down three prescriptions on a piece of paper. Antibiotics was the first so I asked why she was giving them to me. Then she explained that I had Bronchitis. I asked if I could also have the flu and she said that it could have come with the flu. This is all approximate, as it was in German and I was ill so I am guessing that is what she said. She told me the second item was for the “schmerz”--for the pain. Just take it when I feel pain, one pill, no more than three times a day. I later found out that this medicine was the German equivalent of Tylenol, and the maximum dose she told me to take was about half of what is considered the maximum by US standards. Later at home when fever came back I quickly decided to forgo the German standards and resume my intake at US standards. Sorry, liver or kidneys. I just wanted to feel good. The third medicine was for upset stomach, which I hadn’t really felt until I was waiting in the doctor’s office. She said to take 10 drops three times a day. I didn’t know how these drops worked, but when I got home the only way I could figure to use it was to put the bottle right in my mouth and one drop at at a time would slowly come out. It tasted terrible but it did the trick.
Bettina walked with me to the Apoteke where I quickly filled my prescriptions. Everything is already boxed up and on the shelf so there is never a question of coming back later to pick it up (well, that did happen once with Elisabeth) but my Amoxicillin was ready to go and Bettina drove me, shivering, home, handing me a bag of groceries she had picked up for me while I waited at the doctor’s office.
As I put the groceries away I heard John’s car coming down the street and I rushed, or tried to rush, to get myself into bed, knowing that once the crew came home it would be harder to make my way there. And then, ah the rest of a mom whose husband is home! At last I could sleep or lie there or whatever, not thinking about when Henry would be up from his nap or when Elisabeth needed to be picked up from school. I did a lot of thinking in bed and much of it was profound, I am sure, albeit quite narcissistic. Elisabeth had a good visit to the pediatrician. He spoke quite good English and said Elisabeth probably had Swine Flu, which he confirmed in the morning following results of a culture. He said we should bring her back in if she did not improve by Monday. She was full of energy that afternoon and did well on Saturday.
By Sunday I was ready to think about life again, but Elisabeth was back to having high fever. All day, even with Tylenol or Ibuprofen (prescription medicine here) her temperature didn’t get below 103. I resolved to take her back to the doctor and felt encouraged when I remembered that I could call a taxi to take us there. Even in the morning she was so miserable as I was reading to her in bed. I decided to read from the Bible story book we’ve been reading through and the story happened to be about Jesus healing many people. So many were gathered to be healed and waiting for him that they didn’t leave to eat. He was concerned for them and then ensued the miracle in which he fed 5,000 from just a little lunch. His concern for the sick and hungry people touched me to the core and gave me hope for the our weakened family.
That night we watched Toy Story 3 together and had pizza--probably not the best sick food. The pizza upset my stomach a bit and the movie was just a little too heavy for kids. We skipped some of the scary parts, but the evening left me with a low feeling and a sense of loneliness as well. Not only was I far from home, but all my friends here were off on vacation. No, not all, just the ones from Elisabeth’s school. But as any expat will tell you, there is something about the expat community that solidifies friendships quickly. We are the ones that have moved around and we need friends fast, good friends. Mothers from Henry’s kindergarten have been kind to me and we are becoming friends, but we haven’t established that bond that allows you to call them at 8 in the morning and ask for help when you are all sick. For the first time since we arrived (as far as I can remember!) said to John, “I want to go home!”
Thankfully Monday morning Elisabeth woke up with renewed energy and a temperature below 100. As the day progressed it stayed that way and we worked on some cleaning and even cut out hearts out of some pie crust I had (it was Valentine’s Day) but I still spent a good amount of time in bed. I kept Henry home from Kindergarten in case he hadn’t had the flu yet. He bounced off the walls all week, coughing, runny nose, but full of energy. John had gotten a flu shot when he was in the states so he got away with a few days of feeling crummy and that was it. I have found out that yes, they do give flu shots here, so I will be getting one next fall.
We had planned to go to Munich on Wednesday and had put off the decision about keeping or changing our plans until Monday. With Elisabeth’s renewed energy I started thinking we could go, but then I thought about how far away we were planning to go (a four hour train ride) and how much was involved in getting out the door, so we cancelled our reservations. The kids were sad --- Henry cried, “I want to go to a castle!” but we promised that we would go somewhere. Finding a decent place to stay overnight was tricky, so we ended up going to Bremen for the day. More on that later.
Thus ends the sick chronicles for now. Elisabeth is back at school today. Henry went to Kindergarten this morning and I’m trying to catch up on things. It is a gorgeous sunny day, but quite cold. I was shocked this morning at how light it was when we left the house at 7:25 AM. It has been nearly two weeks since we left the house so early and we are getting longer and longer days.
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