Travel Tuesday
Daughter has been crook (Australian for ill) with croup for the past 8-9 days, which in turn has raised two points of reflection for me:
1. Why has an 11-year old still got croup?
(The medical fraternity assures me that it is unusual, not unheard of, but unusual.)
2. Thank goodness it didn't happen when we were away on our last adventure, like it had one other time when we were in Dorrigo, in New South Wales (Australia).
I have decided to take daughter to the respiratory professor guru at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne to address the first one. As for point 2, getting sick while travelling is not much fun at all. Not only can it spoil a perfectly good holiday, but the stress levels feel like they're up 10-fold, mainly due to the unfamiliar surroundings and even possible remedies on offer.
That time in Dorrigo was pretty frightening. Fortunately, culture shock wasn't an issue as such, and the hospital we visited looked fairly familiar (although we don't spend much time in hospitals as a rule!). But what did spook us was a whole discussion on asthma medication with people we would never see again, and daughter lying there with an oxygen mask over her face. That was rather off-putting I can assure you, although she thought it was a great joke; she was four at the time. The whole notion of being transient, and then wondering whether it would happen again when out in the mulga is sometimes enough to keep you awake at night. But like most things in life, you really do need to go with your instinct, your gut, and mine was telling me that medication was not needed (we did take it with us "just in case" though) and that with a bit of R&R, all would be fine. And I was right, thank goodness.
One other time we had just arrived in Los Angeles 12 hours previous, daughter was seven, and the culture shock was somewhat more obvious. Not only was everything on a much larger scale, the 14-hour flight will do it every time! We woke up after a fitful night's sleep, she had a banana and next thing you know the mushed up remains were regurgitated on the hotel's carpeted floor. That was so not attractive, and so not wanted, but there was nothing I could do. I had nothing to clean it up with. So other than calling housekeeping for assistance (which I did), we did what every good tourist would do, we walked out and left it. I still have nightmares about that one!
On the whole, we've been pretty lucky with the health stuff whilst on adventures. I'm sure there are many more horror stories to be shared. I'm just fortunate that on this particular topic, I'm not that well versed and may that trend continue indefinitely!
Safe travels.
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