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Dead or Alive?

2001-10-09

On Saturday morning I got up (I say got up, not woke up, sleeping was not involved), had juice and toast with Mom and waited until eight to call the US agent for the travel company. When we called him, he said that it was midnight in Shanghai and we probably wouldn�t hear anything until three or four in the afternoon. Oh, boy, eight more hours of waiting, not know what the hell is going on. Worrying that Dad has collapsed or died and having no way to find out.

In any case there was nothing I could do, and Mom seemed OK so I went home. I slept for a couple hours, went to lunch with my husband and a friend. My sister called me at three, making my heart pound. No news. At four my Mom called. She wasn�t holding up too well. I cut short our shopping trip, gathered up some clothes and went out there. By the time I got to there, Mom had called the agent. He had no news. She then called the hotel in Shanghai. He had checked in, but wasn�t in his room. She left a message for him to call her.

Five thirty. The phone rings. Please, please let it be some actual news. It�s Dad. The fact that he�s well enough to talk starts me crying. My cell phone rings, it�s Middle Sister. I tell her Mom is talking to Dad, and then I stand silent next to Mom. I know that she will, as I am, derive comfort from listening to Mom talk to Dad. When Mom finishes talking and hangs up, I tell my sister I will call her back.

Mom gives me the news. He is feeling well, but a doctor the hospital in Gui Lin (sp?) took a CAT scan and told him he has an aneurysm. An aneurysm? He�s walking around with a time bomb. Get home soon, Dad, please. He still doesn�t have flight information. They missed the flight they were supposed to take, and the Chinese airline isn�t answering their phone. He�ll leave it to the US agent to get us the flight information.

I call middle sister back, give her what news I have and tell her that I�ll call back with flight information. I ask her to make arrangements for a limo. She suggests that we meet at the hospital and leave our cars there. The limo can take us from there to the airport. Good idea. Then I call Little Sister. More tears, on all sides. At least they�re tears of relief.

I go and fetch some McDonald�s for dinner and we settle down on the couch and watch comedies. No more drama today, please.

At eight o�clock I call the US agent again. Do any of these people understand that we are just about insane with worry? He still doesn�t have flight information. But he calls back around fifteen minutes later with flight number and arrival time. I call Middle Sister and she makes the limo arrangements.

We get up on Sunday. Poached egg on toast for Mom, poached egg and toast for me (yes, there�s a difference). Shower, dress, etc. in preparation. Mom�s a little tired. There are rests between drying hair and dressing. We take both cars to the hospital. Hopefully I will be able to go home after we get him settled at the hospital.

Middle Sister and her boyfriend pull in right behind us as we park. We�re early, so we go to the cafeteria. I get a soda, they get some food and we go outside to wait. A few minutes later the limo arrives. We load up and off we go.

I�d never been in a limo before. What a silly excuse for a car. It had fiber optic stars in the roof. That changed color. In time with the strip light that ran all around the inside of the car. There was soda and juice. Also vodka, whisky and rum. I really could have used vodka for breakfast about then.

We get to the airport. Little Sister shows up almost as we sit down. She and I decide to go to the airline counter and ask someone to help Dad off the plane in the very likely even he hasn�t asked for help himself. There are National Guard personnel very visibly everywhere. We try to go outside and go downstairs on the escalator, and are shooed back in by policemen. We wonder what that is all about.

Downstairs again, we wait. Arrival time on the board continues to say 10:47 until almost 11:00. It then clicks over to �Arrived�. Middle Sister, Little Sister and I position ourselves where we can see him at the first possible instant. Every pair of pants coming around the corner cause my stomach to lurch.

At last he comes around the corner, smiling and waving like a returning hero. (He is a hero, he�s home!) A few minutes of hugging and crying and we pack him up in the limo. Off to the hospital.

We wait in the hospital emergency room for about 45 minutes before he�s taken in to be triaged. The CAT scan and treatment letter he brought from China were the most exciting thing the triage nurse had seen all day.

We cycle in and out of Dad�s little curtained off room, they only want two of us in there at a time. I cycle in just in time to listen to the doctor talk to Dad. He thinks, from the symptoms, that he�s been having Transient Ischemic Attacks (TIA�s from here on out). Not that those are good, but they�re not a full blown stroke and they�re not an aneurysm.

So the verdict is Alive, and likely to stay that way for a while, with luck and the river don�t rise.

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