Scary week
Note: this post is a month out of date. India is fine now, but this was a rough experience for her, and for the rest of us.
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For anyone who travels a lot on business, the greatest fear is a real medical emergency back at home when you are inaccessibly far away.
When I left for Cairo last Saturday afternoon, India was fine. By mid-afternoon on Sunday, she sent an e-mail reading, “I must have the flu. Shivering and shaking, and threw up on the beach.” We talked and e-mailed back and forth, as she started feeling worse and worse.
India is as hard as nails, and for the first couple of days she kept assuring me (and herself), that it was nothing serious. Zola was grown up about helping around the house, taking care of Tallulah, and taking care of himself. India felt the situation was manageable.
On Tuesday morning, she finally went to see our family doctor in Cape Town. He diagnosed a bacterial infection, and gave her some oral antibiotics, but couldn’t realy tell much else. She spent the day driving around, and taking care of the kids.
From the other end of the telephone line (unfortunately 10,000 kilometers away), I could hear her condition getting worse. Her fever climbed to about 104,and she became increasingly incoherent. Her breathing was erratic and gaspy, and she coughed continuously. On Tuesday evening, our doctor friend, Paula, drove to our house, and took India to the hospital. The kids went to stay with our friends, Paul and Lucille.
Once she was in the hospital, getting intravenous antibiotics and rehydrating, India and I both figured that she would start getting well almost immediately. South African private health care is excellent, but this particular hospital seemed disorganized an understaffed. They kept forgetting to re-attach her IV, or to give her paracetamol, or to keep her properly hydrated. More important, no one seemed to have any idea what was really wrong.
Unfortunately, on Tuesday night, by the time we realized that I really needed to be with her in Cape Town, I had missed the one flight per day from Cairo to Johannesburg.
Throughout the day on Wednesday, she wavered between feeling bad and worse. Our phone conversations were surreal. I would excuse myself from a meeting in Cairo, hear my wife in pain and sometimes in delirium, feel absolutely powerless and very scared for her and for us, and then go back into the meeting. The emotional dislocation was unlike anything I had felt before.
Finally, I got on the Wednesday night flight, and got to Johannesburg early on Thursday morning. With good fortune, I skipped directly onto a Cape Town flight (getting on line at the ticket counter three minutes before a 200-person group visiting from Rutgers University showed up), and I was in Cape Town by noon. When I got to the hospital, India was a little better, but in very rough shape. The antibiotics appeared to be winning out over the infection, but she was still very sick.
That evening, she had laparoscopic surgery. Complicating (or maybe explaining) the situation, she had tested positive for pregnancy, and our doctors were worried that it was ectopic. It turned out not to be, but the surgery confirmed that her internal organs were all inflamed and infected. The pregnancy, which we wre assured was non-viable, was an emotional twist that we were completely unprepared for.
On Friday, India really got much better. Whether the antibiotics or her immune system won the battle over the infection, we don’t know. By Friday evening, though, she was off the IV, feeling very grumpy, and ready to go home. Both kids were tearful with relief when we brought them to see her. I think was more scary for them than it was for India or for me.
Finally, on Saturday morning, we brought her home. Tallulah made a huge poster, copying the words “Welcome Home” from a balloon we had bought at the hospital. We are all very happy and relieved to have her back, but still completely clueless about why she was sick. India’s plans to run the Two Oceans ultramarathon in early April are off, which is sad for her. She was in great shape, and would have had a phenomenal time.
All of this has been scary, and disruptive, and unpleasant. We are glad that the worst is behind us.