Thursday, September 16, 2010

Comedy of Errors, without the comedy, Part II

The next morning we were awakened, as usual, by the sound of a crying baby. Checking my telephone clock, I saw it was 5:30am – the time Zoltan had been waking all week. He's in a new place, he's getting my cold, I'll just get him up and we'll have an early nap. All sounds fine except for one thing that hadn't completely registered in my mind – it was 4:30am local time.

I nursed Zoltan, made tea for my poor sore throat, thanked my wisdom in going to bed what seemed so ridiculously early the night before. We played a while and were eventually joined by Terry. I started talking about possible plans for the day and he tells me I may need to take the kids somewhere on my own and drop him off at the hospital, because …

he'd been having chest pains since the afternoon before

So I fed Zoltan while Terry got on the computer and started researching heart attacks. We started gathering the diaper bag essentials, setting the nearest hospital into the Garmin, and going back and forth between freaking out and reassuring ourselves that it didn't have enough of the warning signs to be a heart attack, but it could be something slower but equally as dangerous.

In the end, we waited for Alex to wake up and Zoltan to take a nap then comparatively calmly got into the car and drove into town.

Guess what? There's a marathon in Tallinn today and half the roads are closed, other roads are merely blocked off. Between the map, Garmin, and Terry's internal guiding system, we make it to the hospital. We can't figure out where to go or even if we parked in a legal spot, so I insist that we just need the diaper bag and kids, nothing else, as I could go back to the car. We finally make our way to the emergency room where Terry stands in line while I seat the kids and pull out snack traps in the waiting area. Next thing I know Terry's heading back somewhere and we're not allowed to go with him. Pretty much what we expected. We settle in.

Then I realize I hadn't brought my car keys and Terry hadn't given them to me before he disappeared. I had 2 toys, few snacks, no drinks and no change for the vending machine. We hadn't even gotten the stroller out of the car. Sugar booger.

Between playing in the grassy area outside and eating snacks, plus the water cooler the nurse was able to point us to in a pretty open area – it was Sunday morning around 9am so the place was pretty dead – I managed to keep the kids happy for over an hour. Finally I had to ask a nurse to either let me back there or get Terry to us because I needed the car keys. She went and fetched them for me, and we went to get the stroller out of the car to take a walk. I went back into the hospital to try to use the bathroom (all locked!) and ran into Terry checking out. Everything checked out, but the doctor didn't give any instructions for follow up, nor did he mention what was causing Terry's pains. We decide to toss Tartu off the itinerary and get back to Russia where we can consult with the RMO and decide what, if any, next steps were needed. Given the doctor's apparent unconcern, though, we decide to stay in Tallinn for the planned duration.

So, homeward bound for lunch and to figure what to do next. Tallinn had been so empty we thought today may be a good day to go to the old city, on the other hand the traffic re-routing was challenging enough maybe going to the open air museum would be a better bet. We settle on going back to Tallinn … get thoroughly confused with the detours … and head on to the open air museum.

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