We made it home....

Me, barely though. :) I'm talking about our Christmas trip to Rome. Rome was beautiful, but personally my trip could have been a lot better. We left on Saturday, and I was feeling a little sick, but of course with all the nonreturnable money we had spent on this trip, I was definitely not going to stay home.

On Sunday I started feeling a little bad. My kidneys were hurting, yeah that was all I needed walking around Rome. Monday was somewhat tolerable, Tuesday during the day was really starting to get to me, and that was the day we did the Vatican, Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter's Basilica, so obviously I didn't get to enjoy them too much. By Tuesday afternoon at the hotel it was getting worse, and by 6:30 I couldn't handle it anymore.

We went to the Italian ER where I was in pain for a while, but they labeled me with "green" importance, so I waited forever. Thankfully the worst of the episode didn't last too long, and I was able to sit around in only a little bit of pain. They finally saw me, and gave me an iv with fluid and painkillers, ran a few tests, some x-rays (they thought I had kidney stones,) and told me, "yeah you have an infection, but we don't know what." I think they did know, actually and just didn't want to give me their antibiotics since I would be leaving in two days. Which surprisingly I'm not mad about, because health care is free for Italians, and I don't think it very highly funded. They probably knew I would make it home okay, and wanted to save the antibiotics for someone with greater need.

I was somewhat shocked at the ER. They had it set up like a triage, with a good 20 to 30 people crammed into one room, with no dividers, that I had to walk through do get to the bathroom to do my urine test, which even their instrument for that was a little plastic drinking cup. Nice. I knew I had a kidney infection, and if I knew they HAD to know it. Both my doctors and my tour guide (who was translating for me when she could be there, she kept having to go back and forth from me to the group) kept asking, "How do you know it's your kidneys? " I wanted to say, "Because I F'N know where they are, and they F'N HURT!" I guess Italians maybe aren't too keen on listening to their bodies, because they were surprised that I seem to know something about my own body.

Anyway, they offered that I could stay there for the night, with more pain killers, I said no. I wanted to get back to the hotel, not be in that run down room without my family for any longer. Unfortunately, because of this I was unable to attend midnight mass, which I had been so excited about. Oh well.

I was fine all night, but around lunch the next day, the painkillers were wearing off, and I was beginning to get miserable. Tony walked to probably the only farmacia open on Christmas and brought some over the counter pain killers for me. (My Hero!) I lived on these until we headed home yesterday. And when we arrived at the parking lot where our car was, we ran into it and headed to our ER, where I was in heaven. They didn't doubt me for a second, immediately gave me some painkillers and fluid through an IV, ran some tests, and pretty soon had me on the antibiotics that I knew I needed. I was so relieved. We stayed there for a few hours, then headed home, where I thought I would be able to get a good night's sleep, but unfortunately I was still being attacked with cold chill and intense fever episodes which made my night pretty miserable still.

Anyway, so I will post about Rome later, because I need to get the MOMS Club newsletter done today, and I know the Rome post is going to be a very long one.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas!