Continuing Our Education In Portuguese Healthcare

Tuesday marked six weeks from my back surgery (seven from the accident ), so I had my first checkup scheduled since the stiches were removed.  The appointment went well, but the day ended up more eventful than we had planned . . .

Last Saturday night two of our friends from Bible school flew in to spend a few days with us in Portugal.  We all had a great time Sunday and Monday, but Diego stayed home from school Monday complaining that he did not feel good.  He started coughing in the afternoon, began throwing up in the evening, and slept very poorly most of the night, waking up to vomit several times.  Diego has asthma, and as the night went on, his breathing got progressively worse.

Around 6:00 a.m. Diego woke up complaining of stomach pain and breathing with more difficulty, so we decided to take him into the children’s hospital.  We had no wait at all, and they immediately hooked Diego up to oxygen as his O2 saturation level was fairly low (80, with 95-100 being normal), and then gave him some medicine via the mask to help his asthma.

The oxygen made Diego feel better quickly, and we agreed that his mask made him look like a fighter pilot.  He then wanted an explanation of what his O2 saturation was, so I explained that his bloodstream has cells, kind of like ships, that deliver the oxygen to all the parts of his body that use it.  The ships, of course, get loaded in the cargo docks we call lungs, but the mean germs were blocking some of the ships from getting loaded, so out of 100 ships, only 80 were full - that is why he did not feel very good.  The oxygen mask was like sending extra trucks to the loading docks, and the medicine in the mask was like sending police to catch the bad guy germs messing up the loading.  This is not me oversimplifying things for children; this is how I prefer to view physiology.

Diego could not see his screen showing the O2 readings, so for the rest of the day he wanted fairly constant updates about how many of his ships were full.  He also concluded that while the good guys and bad guys might be fighting OVER the loading docks, it felt like they were fighting IN his tummy.

Anyhow, while he improved dramatically right away, he still did not feel good, and when they took him off oxygen his O2 levels would drop back below normal, so he ended up spending the night there with Holly and did not get out until about 3:30 p.m. the next day (yesterday).  He is doing fine now, and we got new inhalers for him, as well as better guidelines on how to use them than we had before.  We will have a follow up appointment in May.

It was against that backdrop that my six week broken back checkup rolled around.  We are very grateful our Bible school friends were here as:

A) They allowed both of us to go with Diego to ER without waking Lucas up (Holly is better at comforting Diego, and I’m better explaining germ battles at oxygen loading docks, so it’s nice to both be there)

B) They came to stay with Diego while Holly took me to my checkup, which conveniently was in the same massive healthcare complex as the pediatric hospital (although after I got X-rayed Holly went back to Diego to free our friends up to go pick Lucas up from daycare).

Anyway, my back looks good.  I will need to keep wearing the external brace until June fourth, but then I should be able to transition back to normal and get my pilot medical certificate about a week later.  It looks like we will be able to leave for Mozambique mid-June, which is more or less on schedule (about two weeks later than we’d planned).  We are very thankful for that!  And here are a couple of pictures of how they fixed my back.

I also got to see a couple of my favorite nurses who took care of me for twenty days.

Sometime between September of 2017 and March 2018 I will need another surgery to remove my titanium reinforcement (I’m basically Ironman right now, only with titanium), but the doctor said the removal was a simple procedure that could be done in South Africa or the US (although we might return to Portugal for it if the insurance of the car I hit pays here).

Anyhow, after my appointment I took a shift with Diego in the hospital so Holly could get food and see Lucas a little, then we switched and I went home to help put Lucas to bed and sleep.

When I got home I found our friends from Bible school had used their vacation day to clean our house, do our laundry, and wash our dishes (when they weren’t picking up Lucas from daycare, babysitting him, or watching Diego for us).  This was a huge blessing as we had been getting a bit behind in housework even since I started pulling slightly less than zero percent of my weight in late February.  

Since I was stuck in bed and Holly was at the hospital, our friends even got up with Lucas during the middle of the night! (I normally need help to put the brace back on, but sleep without it.)

Obviously it was a less than fun experience, especially for Holly, who was already stretched pretty thin, (and who had to try and sleep in the hospital’s semi-broken recliner), but we are very thankful that Diego is OK, that my back is recovering well, that it looks like we are still within a couple weeks of the schedule for Mozambique, and that God arranged friends with servant’s hearts to be visiting when it all happened.

Thank you so much for your prayers, we really appreciate them!

 Grady