Slammed

Some of you have been kind enough to notice that I haven’t posted since the end of September, even going so far as to email us to make sure we are still alive. I really appreciate your concern and now I can finally give a full accounting of my “absence” from the blogosphere (is that a word? Seems like it should be…).

Dave’s mom arrived right around the end of September, as you can see from the post on the Five-Pagoda Temple. Last Tuesday, October 2, we went by train to Datong, about a four and a half hour trip from Hohhot. I will post separately about the trip (yes, I have been promising this for too long now, but recent circumstances made it seem kind of unimportant) but for now the important thing to know about it is our return from Datong. Dave’s mom contracted some kind of bug—food related, we are all certain—the night before we left on a 6 a.m. train ride back home. I won’t go into great details in the interest of preserving her dignity, but I will say that it hit with full force about an hour into the train trip. Luckily, we were pretty close to the bathroom; unluckily, we had to share it (the hole in the floor variety) with about 100 other passengers in our car, and the door to it had an uncanny ability to lock itself when no one was in it. We were able to get her back to her hotel room—in the same Education Hotel next door to us, where we stayed upon our arrival in China—by 10:30, where she stayed for 2 days, sicker than the proverbial dog. We finally figured out it was bacterial (guesswork mostly, but hey, we lucked out this time. Actually, our Lonely Planet guide gave us a very detailed description of all the symptoms of traveller’s diarrhea, including the type of antibiotics used to treat it, one of which we actually had in our possession! How’s that for luck?), got her started on antibiotics, and she made a brilliant recovery. Fortunately for her, we had done most of our touristing and eating out, so she was content (or rather, she didn’t have any choice) to stay close to home and eat in.

Let’s see, it was Friday that we came back from Datong, so Pat was ill Friday, Saturday, and part of Sunday. Just as she came out from under her personal plague, Grace contracted her own. Monday morning Grace woke up with a stomach ache. Much to my chagrin, I did not take it very seriously at first, as Grace was unduly affected by her grandmother’s illness, to the extent that she was sure she would throw up, even though we explained that we didn’t think she could catch it from Pat. Dave left for work at 7:55 a.m. and at 8:00 Grace threw up for the first time. I won’t go into all the gory details, but she threw up every 15-20 minutes for the rest of the day. By about 1:00 I was starting to wonder how soon one becomes dehydrated. She couldn’t keep any liquid down, not even ¼ teaspoon. Shortly after 3:00 p.m. I took great liberties on Kadlec Hospital and called the emergency room. The kind nurse I spoke with confirmed my fears about dehydration which induced a great flurry of activity on our end. Phone calls, a class to be cancelled, and Clyde (Mr. Song) to be found, Dave, Grace and I headed to a hospital with Clyde, in hopes of finding something to make our little baby better. I have to tell you, the onset of dehydration isn’t pretty. I’m sure Grace could have gone longer, but she was definitely getting awfully lethargic and not even concerned about constantly throwing up. If my doctor is reading this, my apologies for not having caught on to the situation sooner. I always think that somehow things are going to turn around for the better. This time I was wrong.

Grace threw up in the taxi (always prepared, I had my handy-dandy homemade barf bag—a towel in a plastic bag), threw up while waiting to see a doctor, and threw up while waiting to get an IV. Like I said, every 15 minutes. We didn’t really know what to expect from the hospital, although I certainly had hoped that I would never have the opportunity to see one from the inside. What can I say? It wasn’t nice and bright and shiny with smiling nurses and doctors. It was disorienting, not particularly up to our standards of hygiene, but passable, and entirely conducted in Chinese.

Waiting to see the doctor (we've actually already been to the doctor at this point).

In the "Involves the Operating Room"

Just before seeing the doctor (barf bag in the foreground).

Thank goodness yet again for Clyde, who really helped us out. The doctor was kind but didn’t leave much room for questioning by us. She listened to Grace’s heart but didn’t take her temperature. She asked questions about various things, which we told her through Clyde, and she wrote a lot of stuff down in a booklet. Originally she was just going to have Grace receive a shot to stop the vomiting, and then send us home with some probiotic medicine (good bacteria). Dave insisted that we get an IV, which we got. Or rather, Grace did, but you knew that. Little did we know that it would take 2 hours for 500 ml of sugar and salt solution to drip drip drip its way into Grace.

It seemed to help her though. The shot beforehand, the one to stop the vomiting, took us all by surprise, though. The needle looked about the size one would use on an elephant (only slight exaggeration) and it went into the side of her itty bottom. After that, she refused to look at the more appropriately-sized needle for the IV, and never once looked at her hand. So Dave, Clyde, and I sat in an unheated room with Grace prone on a bed (with temps dropping down rapidly—it got below freezing that night) and chatted about cell phones, compared health insurance and hospitals in China and America (I won’t touch this discussion, as I am sure Dave will talk about it on his blog), and generally tried to stay warm and keep Grace’s spirits up.

The doctor's notes on Grace, receipts for services rendered (total about $10), medicine.

After standing for too long on the street in teeth-chattering cold, we finally got a taxi and headed home, confidant that all would now be well. And then Grace threw up again in the taxi. This time I wasn’t so prepared, as I had tied up the now soggy towel in the bag. I ripped it open with one hand while Grace took care of her business all over Dave and me. That night was a rough one, because we couldn’t get her to eat (the doctor suggested millet porridge, baked steamed bun chips, and pickled vegetables—the Chinese version of the BRAT diet, I guess) and couldn’t get her to hold the medicine down. She threw-up twice before bed and again in the middle of the night.

The next day, yesterday, she cried all day because of course her tummy hurt like crazy, she had a weird dry cough, her throat hurt from all the stomach acids, and she didn’t want to touch any food or drink. I was a mean mama, though, and forced some millet porridge and rice down her, along with some Gatorade. She hasn’t thrown up since, and today has been much better. She still has the cough, go figure, and her poor little heart is just racing all the time, trying to get better, I guess (Dave clocked it at 140 bpm last night). But she has eaten millet again, half a banana, some crackers, and drank quite a bit of fluids. Which of course is why I can finally write a post—I am no longer completely panicked and freaked out, Dave is no longer trying to figure out the quickest way to fly her back to the States, and we are all tentatively confident that we can make it through the rest of our time here in a reasonably healthy state. I just really really hope that Grace is done with it all. She has had a horrible last 4 weeks (eye nearly all better, ringworm trying to stay on but losing the battle, rash gone and only a few spots on her torso left to remind us of that episode) and she deserves to be healthy and happy the rest of the time.