On the mend...

Thanks so much to everyone for all the well wishes. It was nice to hear from so many of you. Soren is still in the hospital - staying for the third night tonight - but I think that speaks more for the tendency here to hospitalize kids for longer than we do rather than any indication that he's very sick. He has been running a slight fever (100.2 degrees) intermittantly and so they suggested that he stay another night. The croup seems to be under control so they've stopped the nebulizer treatments. But his cough still sounds really tough. It is really dry. They started antibiotics today and he's getting cough medicine too.

We've been in contact with our insurance company to be sure that we'll have all our ducks in a row to get reimbursed for this hospital expense. It looks like they will cover it. We'll need to pay here and then submit the paperwork when we return. They gave us some specific requirements that we need to have in the paperwork, but it isn't anything too unusual. Today while I was working with the doctor (here the doctors talk about billing stuff, rather than other admin people like in the US) I asked if she could give us an esimate or even a ballpark of what the cost would be. I haven't asked (suppose I should) but it seems really unlikely that they'll take Visa, so we'll need to pull out enough money at the ATM to pay the bill. With a $300/day ATM limit we needed to know how many days we'd need to max out the card. She agreed to work up our bill for us so that we could plan. The total bill for a three night hospital stay is going to be under $400!

While it is sad to see Soren sick and disappointing to not be able to go freely about our travels, we are still meeting lots of great people and definitely learning about new cultures and customs! Some random observations:

* As I mentioned before, they seem to hospitalize kids (and maybe adults too, but we haven't experienced that) much more liberally than we do at home. Since we have the windows into all the other rooms we can watch all the other patients and families. Most of them don't seem very sick. The boy next to us has also been getting breathing treatments, but otherwise he seems completely healthy. And he's been here for at least three nights. Another mother who speaks English said her son has been here since Monday. He had a rash that was a reaction to a topical medicine but the doctor wanted him hospitalized in case it was something else. The two babies next to us seem totally fine, I can't see any signs at all that either of them are sick. I know that I am missing much of the story since I can't talk to most of them, but it still is clear that there aren't life-threatening illnesses that are keeping them in the hospital.

* They do bring three meals a day to the room. Breakfast is usually two pieces of white bread with an enormous slab of butter and jam (with no visible fruit content!), today was some sort of rice-like oetmeal. Lunch is full meal - today it was a chicken leg, mashed potatoes, and mashed beets. Dinner was two pieces of white bread, the requisite butter slab, and a hot dog.

* They have showers and a kitchen we can use.

* There is a playroom for the children. That seemed a bit strange for us at first since presumably a large percentage of the kids would have contagious diseases, right? We resisted going at first until 1) we tried to contain an energetic two year old locked in a room all day, and 2) we noticed that most of the other kids don't seem very sick. So now, we've been letting him go down to play for awhile and then coming back and washing his hands like crazy. In typical Soren style, he's making lots of friends. He's also seemed to come to terms that none of them can talk to him.

* There isn't soap anywhere. We find that fairly disconcerting considering this should be a fairly clean enviroment, but as we look around we see that most of the other families have brought their own and have it set up next to the sink in their room. We carry Purell with us while traveling so we had that for the first day until Peter ran out to buy some. In our US hospital the nurses wash their hands upon entering and exiting the room. Definitely not the case here.

* This is a lot more do-it-yourself care. Yesterday the nurse dropped off the nebulizer and said "10 minutes" and then left the room. Fortunately, it was easy to figure out. Then tonight she handed me a thermometer and started to leave. I had no idea which button to push on the digital thermometer so I had to ask for some help on that one. They also will pretty much leave us alone if there isn't a problem. While it is nice that Soren can get uninterupted sleep, it is up to me to let the nurse know if there is a problem.

* No one smokes in the hospital. While that may seem overly obvious, it isn't here. It seems that everyone smokes here. We've started calling the "no smoking" section in restaurants the "low smoking" area instead. Because plenty of people smoke in the no smoking section. At first my American indignence was raised, but then when I noticed that there were ashtrays on the no smoking tables, I realized that this was expected. As usual when we don't understand something, we make up a story about it. Our theory is that in the smoking section, if you don't chain smoke you will be kicked out of the restaurant. If you'd only like an occasional cigarette then you head to the no smoking area. ;-)

We are hoping that he'll be discharged tomorrow. Depending on what time that happens, we will likely leave town. Our plans aren't totally set yet, but at this point it doesn't look like we will visit Peter's grandparent's hometown. That is just a bit more rural than we are willing to go right now. I think we'll stay a bit more mainstream just to know that we can have access to medical care in case Soren doesn't continue improving.