So What Do You Do In a Medical Emergency?

St. Patrick’s Day 2022. We’d been pretty lucky up to this point in our travels. A few bumps and bruises from hiking and biking, but nothing that a little rest couldn’t cure.

We’d planned a stop in Santa Fe to visit The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. We had tried in 2021, but timed tickets were sold out for our available dates. This year, we’d planned in advance and had secured tickets for early in the day. The day dawned with grey skies, wind, and dropping temperatures. We checked out of our campground and headed toward Santa Fe. By 9:00am, a cold, wet snow had started.

We made it to town, parked and went into the museum. We were partway through when John said he wasn’t feeling well.

John decided to skip the rest of the museum and retreat to the van to rest. I soon returned to the van to find him nauseous and doubled over with belly pain. Oh, boy. Now what do we do? Strangers in a strange town. We Googled to find an emergency facility nearby. John started to drive, but felt too sick to manage it. So, we stopped in the middle of the street and did a Keystone Cops run around the van to change drivers. My first real time at the wheel of our van. In the snow. I made it to the Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center, dropped John off at Emergency, parked, and followed him in.

The emergency team started working on John right away. Four hours, and lots of tests later, it was determined that he had an internal hernia. A loop of his small intestines had been squeezed and blocked off by a piece of scar tissue or an adhesion of some sort. He was going to need surgery. The surgeon said that she would perform laparoscopic surgery, and hoped the blockage could be freed that way. By 5pm, John was in pre-op. By 8pm, he was in recovery. The surgeon said this was most likely a once in a lifetime occurrence for John; it was extremely unlikely for it to reoccur.

If you could consider any of this situation lucky, despite John’s excruciating pain, there really was a lot of good luck on our side. First and foremost, the timing. If this had happened a day earlier or later, we’d have been far from a hospital and the outcome would have been different. Second, we were lucky that this happened near one of the finest facilities in New Mexico, with an amazing medical staff. The teamwork that I watched as John went through the day was highly proficient and caring. The surgeon, Dr. Stephanie Rael, was excellent. The laparoscopic procedure was successful and more extensive surgery wasn’t needed. The hospital let me stay with John in emergency, pre-op, and recovery. At 10pm, when John told them that I had nowhere to spend the night, they invited me to stay on the couch in his room.

In two days, we were on the road again.

The lessons: Emergencies happen. You can’t live your life fretting about when the next one will pop up. Emergencies teach you to trust your instincts, and have faith that things usually work out. We have met good and caring people everywhere we go. We were lucky that so many were in our orbit on this St. Patty’s Day. You can bet that we will celebrate this holiday differently next year. And from this day forward, I will have a personal and rather unique sort of connection to Georgia O’Keeffe.

Observations 2020

Not sure where these photos really belong, but part of van life is taking the time to observe curious things. So, a few photos to that effect:

Thoughts on living in a van…

“Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.” Ernest Hemingway.

Rainy days. So much different when you are living in 72 square feet and sharing that space with another person. The van definitely feels smaller on rainy days.

Camping on rainy days near the beach is even more trying. Wet, clumpy sand gets everywhere. We track it into the van, even when we try to be careful. We vacuum, we sweep, we paper towel the floor, but the sand returns, like the tide.

The air hangs heavy with humidity from the rain. The ceiling of the van is damp, almost drippy, just from the steam of our morning coffee.

Opening the doors doesn’t help. The rain has hatched an early crop of blood thirsty mosquitoes. I think of going to get a pedicure, just for a change of scenery, but I’d be embarrassed to show my bug-bitten ankles.

And then, just when you think you can’t take another minute of Florida rain or soppy wet sneakers, the gray clouds roll away to reveal a crystal blue sky with puffy white clouds. A warm breeze picks up and the bugs take a break. Things start to dry out. The van feels cozy again, instead of claustrophobic.

We sweep out the van, pack up and start the trek out to our next campsite. I let the rain images drift to the back of my brain and I try to memorize the image of the clear aquamarine water and the spear-fishing herons. “This wasn’t such a bad campsite,” we say, “Maybe we should come here again.”

So much of the camping experience feels like a metaphor for life. If you wait a little longer, the clouds will clear. And Mr. Hemingway was right. On those rainy days, it’s best if you really love your traveling partner.

So, where are you from?

We get this question all the time from fellow campers. When we say, “Philadelphia,” we usually get a response like, “Oh, my sister lives in Pennsauken” …or Erie.

It just strikes me as funny that we humans seem to need to connect that way. We actually have more in common as campers on this interesting journey, than where we came from. I guess it’s just an innocent conversation icebreaker.

I am often reminded of a travel episode from a college trip in Germany. I was at the Hofbrau House in Munich, which had a beer garden and oompa band.

I was invited to dance by an elderly gentleman who was decked out in lederhosen and sporting a mountain cap with a little feather on it. He had a big handlebar mustache and I was about half a foot taller than he. While bouncing around to a noisy polka, he asked, “Where are you from?” “USA,’ I answered. “Ah, yes,” he nodded vigorously, “Kennedy Airport!” Somehow that was supposed to be more of a common bond than sharing a dance at a beer hall. Oh, well. I guess we all look for those few degrees of separation that connect us.