Right from the start this week was an adventure, and not necessarily always a good one. It started with the early morning taxi ride to the Sea-Tac airport where I'm convinced the driver was nodding off as he was driving, swirving, slowing down and speeding up, hitting the rumble strips over and over, making me a little worried I was going to miss my plane if you know what I mean. Luckily I made it to Boise, Idaho, and from the airport to my hotel in Meridian, without incident.
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| Just Arrived in Idaho! |
As I get settled into my room, picking up groceries and checking out the surrounding area, I noticed two things pretty quick about Meridian, Idaho. One, people sure do like landscaping here. It looks like a new town popped up in the middle of nowhere, nothing but rock and mountains surround the horizon from any view, and the whole place is perfectly landscaped, like a vacation resort in the middle of a desert. Each lawn perfectly green and irrigated, or a nicely designed rock garden.
The second thing, it's dam hot here! Every day was like a dry, sweltering 100°F+, or 40°C, day. I don't know how people were walking about in full pants and jackets in this weather, I was dying in just my t-shirt and shorts, what can I say, I don't like the heat, after all I'm Canadian!
So after getting settled into the new place and calling it a night I wake up at 3am with a searing pain in my left ear. I can't hear from it because it's swollen shut. I've never had a problem like this before, I've had ear aches and an ear infection before but nothing like this. Not wanting to jump the gun and go straight to the hostipal for an unneeded cause and end up with a bunch of unecessary medical bills but unable to get back to sleep due to the pain I decided to go to the 24/7 grocery store across the street and get some over the counter ear drops. I didn't get too much sleep that night and finally in the afternoon Monday, as the pain and swelling continued to get worse, I decided I needed more than just over the counter medicine, I needed to go to the hostipal and get some antibiotics.
The worst thing about going to a hostipal while on vacation is paperwork. Even if you have coverage and insurance there's still a lot of paperwork to do in order to use their services and unfortunately since I didn't have my medical card with me I had extra paperwork to do. That aside the services were pretty quick and painless to use, I was seen quick and given a prescription easy enough, and even getting the medicine wasn't too bad or expensive. I'm still dealing with the paperwork for my visits to the hostipal but fortunately I'm covered from work and shouldn't have to pay anything. This is a pretty big point I've been researching for the full Odyssey, travel and medical insurance. It's important even if you end up not needing it because you never know and it's better to be safe than sorry. Luckily, being in the military, they cover me for medical needs, both when in service and when on leave. When I am no longer in the military before any traveling, insurance will be at the top of the list of things to acquire. For all those traveling, military or not, always make sure you have your medical card or all necessary insurance information with you! As I found out the hostipal needs much more than just your insurance number for billing and records, they need the full proper name of your insurance, it's billing address and contact information as well so having that handy will help cut down paperwork and/or having to pay upfront and hoping to be reimbursed later. Also, contact numbers. Having contact numbers for your insurance company in order to get ahold of them easy to arrange paperwork to be completed in an orderly fashion helps greatly. I was lucky to have friends online to point me in the right direction, and Google, to find the proper 1-800 emergency number for traveling members that helped get the paperwork for the visits rolling and not leaving me fronting the bills.
So the first day of visiting Idaho and training at my our head black belt, Prof. Keith Owen's home club, Ultimate Karate and BJJ was a bust, spent mostly in a hostipal and pharmacy and then finally catching up on lost sleep. What a hell of an adventure in the first 24 hrs, and a terrible start to the week. It didn't get much better.
Tuesday I spent resting, hoping the infection would die down enough to attend class, sadly it did not but I was able enough to get out and watch class that night, more on that later. That night my right ear started to act up and by morning both ears were swollen up, losing probably 80% of my hearing while being in extreme pain. I was unable to sleep or eat due to the swelling on my jaws I couldn't chew, so Wednesday I was off again to the hostipal. My ear infection at this point had gotten so bad that my ears were leaking some sort of discharge and I was fearing permanent damage. No longer was I wondering about being able to make it to training, that I had given up on. Now I was worrying about making it home. Would this heal over in time for my flight? How would I be able to fly home like this? The second visit took a bit longer to deal with mostly because they were busier with people than last time but still saw me quick enough. There was a more thorough examination but the doctor couldn't make out how both ears were now flaring up so bad. It was an external infection, I was told, more commonly known as swimmers ear, but I hadn't been swimming at all this whole time. To today I'm still dealing with this problem, albeit at a much lesser extent, and all I can guess is with all the training in Seattle topped off with the flight over the mountains to Idaho my ears just had enough. I've never had this problem before ever or any other serious ear problems other than some mild cauliflower ear, so it's pretty discerning. So I get a new prescription, not for more or stronger antibiotics but for painkillers to deal with the discomfort. I asked the doctor about flying he didn't seem too worried and said to just dope myself up from the pain. With nothing else to do but hope they'll get better before I fly it was time to rest and hope the painkillers work. They worked alright. Knocked me out pretty good and I was done for the day, missing even being able to watch another class, but not before having a very fun walk down the street and back for ice cream.
(You can insert a picture here of a very unhappy and disgruntled me sitting in a hostipal room, I would have taken one but I was in no mood for pictures at this point)
Thursday comes around and I'm feeling much better, the pressure had gone down I could now chew and eat a full meal without much problems, the hearing loss was still there but not the pain. At it's worst I was pretty much surviving on coconut water, the pressure and pain was so bad that I couldn't clench my teeth, my jaws were so bad I could fit my tongue in the space left between my teeth, eating was pretty much out of the question unless it was soft food. But now I could eat and it felt good. The past two nights I was fighting off a fever in the evening but today I felt like the antibiotics were kicking in and the painkillers were definitely doing their job. I felt good enough to go to class, no rolling but at least I could go and get some reps in, it felt good to be on the mats again but that's for the next post.
The rest of the week I was in a wierd state, unable to hear much but not in pain so long as I kept myself doped up. I finished off the week with the pressure coming down from my ears enough so that I could eat and feel safe enough to fly home. As per advice given to me I tried using chewing gum to help lessen any ear problems while flying as the air pressure changed, but all it seemed to do was make my jaws hurt from chewing too much. I made it home either way, and happily no ear drums exploded on the way. While this whole event was definitely a downer for my trip it actually helped out a lot for planning my full tour. With this hiccup I was able to experience the full gambit of traveling. I spent time graciously accepting the hostipality of friends letting me couch surf, I spent time meeting and making all sorts of friends on the road and learning to get around on my own in a new city, I experienced with measured success, eating relatively healthy while on the road and a limited budget and now I had experienced being sick and dealing with medical insurance and hostipals while traveling. Really other than dealing with law services I had a full view of what to expect and plan for while traveling and I was able to see what areas need more research, but more on that in another future post. So really as much as this whole ordeal sucked it actually helped out in the long run, not that knowing this made it any more fun. So although this post is a bit of a downer, it does illustrate some important points, and trust me, part 2 gets way better!
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| Shopping for headgear to protect my ears and catch the last few classes of the week, read about that in part 2! |
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