Well, thanks to the magic of facebook, most of you probably know that we've had an interesting day yesterday. But, I'll start with what we've been up to the last few days.
I have to be honest and say that even though we're living in this amazing place, and we know how lucky we are, I had a bit of an emotionally rough time from about Wednesday onwards. I felt a bit like when I first had Niamh, and all of a sudden I didn't know exactly what I was supposed to do all day, feeling a bit isolated, missing my old life.... It seemed like after we took a walk around the grounds a few times in the mornings, that was it until we went for a swim in the afternoon.
Then, we met a lovely family from Singapore - Janice and her kids Ryan (18mths) and Jade (3 yrs) who live in our building. Her Mum Maggie is also visiting to help them settle in. They are so sweet, and Niamh really likes playing with them. Jade is so cute, she has an imaginary friend called Aunty Pussycat! On Thursday we all went shopping together at Boroko, and despite a few delays with the drivers (getting frustrating already - especially waiting in the heat with a cranky toddler or three) we had a great day. I found a place that sells phones and bought a SIM card, and was so happy to find that I'll get cheap calls to Australia after 8pm and on weekends! I also printed out some passport sized photos of Biscuit, which was my last hurdle to joining Kindy Club. We found out that (woo hoo!) we get free membership as part of the company's agreement with the hotel for residents.
That afternoon we went and had a lovely time at the kindy club. I'll only put up one photo here, but you can see all the photos on our facebook album - I'll link to it at the end of the post.
It was great meeting everyone and making some connections. Mandy, one of the mums I met, has offered to take me op-shopping next Wednesday - I'm so excited! The mums also gave me the contact numbers for the playgroups that run on Tues and Thursday mornings!
When we came back in the afternoon, I met another Mum, Yolanda, originally from Angola. She is married to one of Dan's colleagues who is Canadian and has a 3 year old and a 4 month old. She was so lovely to talk to, really friendly and easygoing. She's invited me to the women's lunch next Wednesday at the yacht club, and put me in touch with some other people who were helpful in getting settled in. Janice and kids also joined us - it was such a lovely afternoon.
I was feeling fairly triumphant when Dan came home - especially since he told me that the meetings all day Saturday and Sunday that he thought he had were actually cancelled! We all went out for dinner at the nice restaurant here at the hotel. Niamh was well behaved and then went to sleep in her pram without too much fuss. Then, Dan told me "oh, one of the bosses at work said something funny today. He's an American, used to be in the Marines for 20 years - he's a bit scary at first! He said 'oh Dan, I wouldn't get too comfortable where you're staying if I were you. Sometimes people get moved, and it's usually reserved for other people'". I flipped out. What?! After much conversation, Dan told me not to worry about it, he thought this bloke was just trying to give us some friendly advice, and assured me he had nothing to do with the housing allocation department at all. Still, it really took the wind out of my sails! Why would they put us in this awesome place and then move us? If they were going to give us shitty accommodation, just do it straight up and we'd accept it. If they put us here just to suck us in and then move us somewhere cheaper, that is just underhanded and sneaky. I said "If they move us, I'm leaving!"
That night I had a bit of a meltdown. Even though we'd had a pretty great first week, and everything was going well, I really miss everyone back home. I miss the familiarity, the routines, our families, our friends, my work! It's also pretty stressful here, knowing that every time we leave the hotel, I'm responsible for my safety as well as Niamh's. I keep hoping I don't slip up. Anyway, I had a bit of a cry, and then felt a little better.
The next morning, unfortunately, things took a downhill turn. Dan had had an ingrown eyebrow (one of the hazards of having insanely curly hair) for a few days, and on Thurs/Fri his eyelid was getting a little puffy. I started him on some oral dicloxacillin, which is all I had in my suitcase (our freight, filled with my giant tacklebox full of drugs has not arrived yet), but after 24 hours it was actually getting worse. Knowing how quickly things can get crappy up here, we decided to get him checked out at the private clinic/ hospital. All in all, it was actually pretty damn amazing by developing country standards. Since we got there early in the morning, we were seen by a doctor within an hour, and his treatment plan was not at all unreasonable. After collecting our IV antibiotics from the pharmacy, he took us into the Emergency Department, ordered the nurse to administer an (unnecessary) skin test to check for allergies, wait half an hour, then get the IVs. Luckily Niamh fell asleep while we were waiting for the antibiotics. All was going well, but the cubicle was small, so when the nurse arrived to administer the antibiotics I took the sleeping Niamh for a walk just outside the cubicle. I was happily chatting away to a female Indian doctor about what it was like to work in PNG, when all of a sudden we hear "Doctor!!! Come NOW!!!! Quick!" and then to my surprise, they were running into Dan's cubicle.
At first when I saw him slumped sideways against the nurse, I thought "oh he's just fainted". Then I took over holding him up and saw that he was so pale (yes, he can get paler!) that he was actually blue and clammy. His eyes were wide open and fixed straight ahead, and his pupils were so huge there was almost no iris left. I checked, he wasn't breathing, then as I put my fingers to his neck to check for a pulse, he started having a seizure - mercifully lasted only about 5 seconds. Then after all of this, he relaxed, slumped again, and started fighting against me. Once I managed to get him lying down again he closed his eyes, opened them again , then smiled and said "Oh, hello, what's going on here?" The whole thing only took probably about 45 seconds, but I was so terrified while it was happening. It was probably one of the worst moments of my life, thinking he was dying in a place where there was no more help available. No resus team, no evacuation, no ICU. Just awful. The only thing that kept me from flat out panic was knowing that I had seen another of Dan's family members do a very similar thing once (faint, then start convulsing) and at the time had looked it up - convulsive syncope. Basically a combination of no food, a long wait, very hot humid room and a bit of pain combined into a very spectacular fainting episode, and Dan doing a brilliant impersonation of a dead person.
After we left on a few extra oral antibiotics, we had a pretty quiet day. I had a cry again in the evening, then felt much better. Just another thing. By the way, Dan was completely fine within minutes, after I made him eat some of Biscuit's ya-yas (sultanas) and drink some of her jooooos. We even went back to Kindy Club that afternoon so Dan could see her in action, as he hadn't been there yet.
Today we've taken it easy again. Back to kindy club and met more great new people. Some lovely PNG local people, who fork out the ridiculous club fees just so their kids can have somewhere to swim when it's hot. Another really nice Aussie girl with 2 young kids...
So, that's been our eventful week. For a photo journal of much of the above, check out our facebook album.
Thanks so much to everyone for your comments and messages. We're so glad to hear from you - it really feels like we're still in touch with our friends and our home, and it definitely helps us with the move. Tonight after dinner we both sat down, logged in to our precious (sooooooo expensive) internet and read through all the photo comments together.
Hope everyone is safe and well. And Happy Father's Day! :)
xoxo
No comments:
Post a Comment