Last time I posted, I was talking about how traveling is sure to make for some great stories, no matter where you go. Well, this past week I managed to rack up quite a number of stories that I wish I hadn’t.
To give you the cliff notes version, while in London one of my friends whom I was traveling with came down with meningitis, and had to be rushed to the hospital our second evening there. Just to clarify, meningitis is an infection in the spinal fluid that impacts the brain and can become deadly- plus, it is highly infectious.
After the initial shock and terror wore off, it was followed by a whirlwind of pills, shots, IV drips, hospital waiting rooms, panicked calls from parents and questions from the public health officials who would not stop calling. Oh, and we were not allowed to leave the country until Wednesday afternoon, our original plan of returning on Sunday long forgotten.
Back in Barcelona, they cancelled classes to disinfect the building, and more than 80 people went to the doctor just to be checked out and given preemptive medicine. For the better part of a week, it seems safe to say that everyone was pretty much in a state of panic.
We turned out to be lucky on a number of fronts. We got our friend to the hospital on time. We were in a country that spoke English and could understand us even at the height of our panic. Our program was extremely supportive, and had someone from the London office meet us at the hospital and arrange for hotels, taxis and meals, to take care of phone calls and paper work, and to help our friend’s Dad to come to London for free. But best of all, even though it is still early, it looks like our friend is going to be okay.
I’m not really sure what the moral of the story is here or even if there is one, but it sure helped to put a lot of things into perspective.