Holidays and Hospitals
We’re on R&R leave this week. For those of you not familiar with the aid world, R&R stands for Rest and Relaxation. Twice a year Mike gets an extra week of leave we can use to leave Luang Prabang and fly somewhere regional for a little mini-break. This time we’ve headed to the south of Thailand. We’re in Krabi, near a beach called Ao Nang. We’ve rented a small two-bedroom townhouse for six nights that shares a lovely pool with its neighbors. We’ve spent the week introducing Dominic to boats and beaches, catching him as he jumps off the pool’s waterfall, and eating good...
Read MoreAdding insult to serious injury
Until this afternoon the title of this post was going to be “I can’t be bothered to write an update” because that’s how I’ve felt since Wednesday – exhausted and pretty much completely uninterested in my computer, my blog, my book, my job, and the outside world. So instead of blogging I’ve been walking myself and Dominic back and forth from the hotel to the hospital two to three times a day to visit Mike and crawling (collapsing) into bed in the afternoons when Dominic goes down for a nap. The rest of the time I’ve been focused on keeping the youngest member of this family...
Read MoreSearching for silver in storm clouds
It’s been ages since I wrote a post in my series about fruits of the spirit. I’ve felt a bit stuck on the theme of kindness – trying to think of something new and fresh to say on the topic. Or perhaps I should just say that I’ve felt stuck “trying to think”. It’s been a busy, exhausting couple of months. Most of the time right now I feel as if I’m walking around with half a working brain, a quarter of my personality, twice my normal quotient of irritability and anxiety, and not a single flicker of creative inspiration. These last few months have not been my favorite season of...
Read MoreBack to Thailand, back to hospital
So the fact that I actually broke my ankle ten weeks ago instead of just spraining it wasn’t the worst medical news we received last week. That was the news that Mike herniated a disc in his back in March bending over to pick up Dominic. Mike’s been in significant and increasing pain for the past five months, so last week on his way to Sri Lanka for work he stopped for the day at our favorite stomping ground in Bangkok, Bumrungrad Hospital, to see a specialist. The specialist sent him off for an MRI (same day, no waiting, hooray for Bumrungrad) and the MRI confirmed the disc rupture. The...
Read MoreConversations in hospitals
As you can probably imagine, Mike and I have talked about many things since Dominic’s accident. Much of what we’ve been mulling over is serious, hard stuff and nowhere near funny. These two snippets, however, I can share. They’re as close as we came to laughing this week. In the doctor’s office, staring at Dominic’s X-rays on the computer screen while three specialists debated out in the hallway about whether Dominic needed surgery: “I think I should quit the fruits of the spirit project,” I said. “What?” Mike said. “Think about it,” I said. “It took me more than a...
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