Memoir Monday: When the Foreign Becomes Familiar, Barriers Drop

October 25, 2022November 2, 2022raisedintheforeignservice 2 Comments

The Arab world seemed sinister

I lived abroad for 14 years of my childhood as the result of my father’s diplomatic work in Europe and Latin America—my memoir Embassy Kid is expected to be published in 2023 by the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training and New Academia Publishing–but there are huge swaths of planet Earth that I do not know. They remain foreign to me. This includes the Arab world.

Its people and their language exploded into my consciousness on 9/11 when we lived in upstate New York. My husband, who frequently was in New York City on business, narrowly escaped death when he decided to travel part-way home instead of staying the night at the hotel in the World Trade Centers. In the years since then, Showtime’s Homeland and countless other terrorist narratives cemented the sound of Arabic in my narrow mind as malevolent. The opening lines of the Muslim prayer—Allaahu Akbar—sent chills up my spine.

However, I was jarred out of that disappointingly jingoistic mindset three years ago when a Muslim family adopted me in a Dutch hospital. And two recent television encounters—the U.S. Open women’s final tennis match and a new Netflix comedy—have made realize that the Arabic language is not so foreign after all.

You are our Florida family

On May 5, 2019, my heart stopped as I was being rolled into an Amsterdam ER. The cruise ship my husband and I had been on sailed for Oslo as the Dutch doctors got my heart beating. Within minutes, the team had sealed a ruptured aneurysm in my belly.

However, the slow leak had filled my body with so much blood that I hovered between life and death for a month in that Amsterdam ICU while my husband—and daughter and sister, who flew in from the States the next day—sat at my bedside.

They were supported in their vigil by an amazing Turkish family whose father was also in the ICU. From sharing food to trading updates, Yasemin and her family took my family in as their own. The men greeted my husband with the traditional Muslim hand over the heart, and the women simply enveloped them in bear hugs. When I was finally out of danger and was moved to another hospital unit to begin the process of recovery, I got to know Yasemin and her family myself and cheered when her father was able to go home.

That was three years ago. The ties between us have only grown stronger thanks to social media. When Hurricane Ian hit Florida in September, Yasemin was relieved to know that we were safe.

You are our family in Florida.
Yasemin

Just as they are our family—our Muslim family—in Amsterdam. We hope to return to see them in 2023.

Yalla, habibi!

My more recent awakening happened this fall.

Tennis is the sport our television is often turned to. From the Grand Slam January kickoff at the Australian Open in Melbourne through the close out at the U.S. Open in New York City—and loads of smaller tournaments all over that pop up on The Tennis Channel—we know we’ll find someone remarkable to cheer on.

Tunisia’s Ons Jabeur came into our consciousness a couple of years ago when she made it into the quarter finals in Australia, a feat that led her to be described—as she probably almost always is—as “the first Arab/African woman to …”. She is also described by fellow players on the tour as the nicest person they know. Somewhere along this year’s tournament cycle I saw this in action when her opponent cramped up and Jabeur was the first at her side with ice. It’s easy to like Ons.

And what pulled me across the line to think of Arabs as friends I haven’t met yet was the slogan on Jabeur’s team at the U.S. Open women’s final.

Yalla, Habibi!
Ons Jabeur’s team t-shirt slogan

“Let’s go, my dear.” Or, in Midwestern lingo, “C’mon, kid!”

You have got to love that. Well, I did. Ons did not win the match, but she won my heart and that of a whole lot of folks like me who are learning to overcome prejudice.

Prayer becomes familial

The new Netflix dramedy Mo, a quasi-autobiographical series by standup comedian Mo Amer about a Palestinian-American family in Houston. The Arabic woven into the episodes includes lots of my new vocabulary word habibi.

Although it’s a refugee story, an immigrant Palestinian story, it’s also a love letter to Houston. It’s also like an everyman struggle (story) — people who are working paycheck to paycheck, they’re trying to take care of family, people that are dealing with addiction. It has all these layers to it.
Mo Amer, as quote by Gary Gerard Hamilton, AP

Among the storylines is the loss of the family patriarch. I shed another layer of my prejudice during this scene, when the Muslim prayer—Allaahu Akbar—became a deeply personal declaration of faith by three adult children standing over their father’s grave.

Bringing Muslim and Middle East stories to the masses.

I’ve been speaking Arabic all my life

The character Mo’s longtime girlfriend is Mexican-American and Catholic, and it’s the difference in religion that he struggles with, not the cultural difference. As he explains in this clip, 700 years of Muslim control over Spain has left Arab DNA in Latinos’ language, food, and culture.

Clip from Netflix’s Mo.

Spanish was my first language, learned as I emerged from babyhood in 1955 on the lap of Josefina, the Galician woman who lived with our family during my father’s four-year Foreign Service post in Caracas. My Spanish skills were reinforced during subsequent posts to Colombia and Spain, and the language feels deeply personal. It was an immediate connection between me and my Puerto Rican husband when we were dating, and it now links us with our daughter’s new Latino in-laws.

So, it turns out that I’ve been imbued with the Arab culture my whole life.

It’s so easy to find differences between us that we overlook all we humans have in common. Let’s keep talking.

Family Friday: How Public Parks Improve Wellbeing

August 6, 2021raisedintheforeignservice 2 Comments

Paris’ Luxembourg Gardens

One of our favorite days of our 2018 week in Paris was the Sunday we spent in the Luxembourg Gardens, wandering along the sandy paths with other couples, grandmothers and grandchildren, entire families, “le tout Paris.”

Amsterdam’s Vondelpark

The following week, we discovered much the same bucolic feeling in Amsterdam’s Vondelpark, where pedestrians wandered the walkways, and flowers bobbed on the banks of shady streams.

Amsterdam’s Oosterpark

During my unexpected 2019 hospitalization in Amsterdam, my husband would wheel me across the street to Oosterpark. The joy of children playing, the ease of cyclists meandering the broad roads they easily shared with strollers, the green of the glades and sunshine on the meadows, were all part of getting me well.

Tampa’s Public Parks

And, a few weeks ago, our daughter took my husband and me to the Armature Works, a reimagined warehouse overlooking the Hillsborough River that has become a family recreational destination at the northern end of Tampa’s Riverwalk.

The night we were there, so many cars were turning in to park that I assumed there was some type of special event. Nope. There was food, music, the river, and a beautiful evening, and loads of space within which to simply enjoy taking a leisurely stroll. It occurred to me that we’d have all been watching TV at home or lost in social media, or doing some other sedentary non-activity if public space planners had not built us a destination.

Tampa’s Riverwalk

Thank you, public parks!

Wellness Wednesday: Did I Have a Lethal Disease or Just Rotten Luck?

August 4, 2021raisedintheforeignservice 10 Comments

I am well. For the first time since May 5, 2019, I am not a hospital patient.

A healthy patient

Before our 2019 transatlantic cruise to Europe, I considered myself our doctor’s most boring patient. I was a fitness instructor. Apart from having our daughter nearly 30 years ago, I’d never been hospitalized, and I had none of the diseases that creep in as we age. My husband has not been quite as lucky, but he was cleared to travel.

Off we went on our two-week journey across the pond from Florida to Amsterdam, with one additional roundtrip week from Amsterdam to Norway tacked on. We had booked an apartment in Amsterdam’s canal district for a month to end our trip on solid ground in one of our favorite cities.

Three months in the hospital: May 5 to August 9

Saying that I was a boring patient was simply too tempting for The Fates to let lie, but they did give me a chance to make it.

In the single day we were in Amsterdam, I was felled by a ruptured arterial aneurysm, and my heart stopped as I was wheeled into the OLVG Hospital emergency room. They got me back and quickly sealed the leak, but my body struggled to keep going for nearly six weeks in the ICU, leaving me wasted and weak. It took me another six weeks to recover my ability to move and the strength to survive a flight home. I was transferred to a Florida hospital with the savvy to take over my treatment, the University of Florida’s Shands Hospital, where I was an inpatient for a week before being discharged to return home. Tomorrow is the second anniversary of that wonderful re-entry into our palm-and -lake-laden neighborhood.

But hanging over my head was Amsterdam’s diagnosis: the ruptured aneurysm had been surrounded by other aneurysms, symptoms of an extremely rare vascular disease: segmental arterial mediolysis. According to the Mayo Clinic (Jacksonville FL), SAM carries a mortality rate of 50 percent. If the SAM diagnosis was correct, I’d need to be carefully monitored by all-too-rare specialists for the rest of my life. Although Shands was five hours from home, I needed to remain their patient. Maybe forever.

One-month check up: August, 2019

On our return, Shands identified a pseudo aneurysm near my ER incision and fixed it while I tried not to hyperventilate. God bless the nurse who understood what was going on in my head. She stood right next to me chatting about children and dance lessons, keeping me distracted while the rest of the team worked away.

Four-month check up: November, 2019

This time, there was nothing to see. Apart from the evidence of the clamped tear, my blood vessels looked healthy. No aneurysms. Not even any pseudos.

One-year check up: virtual, 2020

It was out of the question to travel to Shands as the pandemic raged. Instead, I ventured to a local facility for the scan, and Shands had a look. Still healthy. No aneurysms.

Two-year check up: July, 2021

We were fully vaccinated mid-winter, and I scheduled my next checkup at Shands before Florida became ground-zero for the delta variant of the Coronavirus. However, by the time we traveled, cases, transmissions, hospitalizations, and deaths were all soaring. We kept on our masks. We sanitized our hands. We drove.

Shands’ CT scan showed no sign of disease. I do not have the terrible, rare SAM. I had some rotten luck, is all.

Go live your life. Follow up with someone closer to home in a year or two, and we’re here if you need us.
Dr. Thomas Huber, Chief of Vascular Surgery, Shands Hospital, University of Florida Health

Discharged

I will always feel deeply grateful to the staff in Amsterdam and at Shands who carried me through the days, months, and years since May 5, 2019, but it feels darn good to be a civilian again.

This time, however, I am taking nothing for granted. I am working hard every day at being strong, well-nourished, and engaged with life.

To life!

Travel Tuesday: When We Experienced Holland’s “Juneteenth”

June 22, 2021June 23, 2021raisedintheforeignservice 2 Comments

Recovering in Amsterdam

When I was hospitalized for three months in Holland in 2019, the highlight of each day was spending the afternoon hours with my husband. It was the only thing that kept him going, he told me much later. Although our daughter had flown to be by his side for the six weeks I was in the ICU, R was alone in an Amsterdam apartment for the subsequent six weeks of my slow recovery from a near-fatal ruptured arterial aneurysm. The time he spent with me in what became our community of nurses and other hospital staff was precious to us both.

When I felt well enough to leave my room for an hour or so, my husband wheeled me down to the hospital’s wide ground-floor thoroughfare, past the cafe and the pharmacy to the small serene chapel around which OLVG hospital had been built. The magic of the nuns who were the original nurses had stayed with the place. We sat in silence for a bit, simply breathing and being grateful for my survival.

Afternoons in Oosterpark

As my recovery proceeded, and at the urging of my nurses, R would roll me across the street to the beautiful expansive greenway of Oosterpark. Simply experiencing the world of normal people living their lives was a healing process, and being in the fresh air for people watching, flower gazing, and fresh air breathing was a tonic.

Dutch Emancipation Day, Keti Koti Festival

On Sunday, July 1, the dark skinned tea lady who brought me my breakfast told me about a celebration that was happening in Oosterpark that day. I had gotten to know that she was from Suriname, a former Dutch colony in South America that had retained its Dutch heritage in independence. It was Emancipation Day, she said.

New signage at the park’s entrance stated that it was the Keti Koti Festival.

Keti Koti, a phrase from Suriname meaning ‘Broken Chains’, is a free celebration of liberty, equality and solidarity.
IAMAmsterdam

The park was a sea of African print. Men in dashikis, women and their daughters wrapped head to hip in scarlet, saffron, and geranium green. Drum bands surging along the broad walkways followed by clapping and whooping revelers. Food vendors hawking sweet-scented meat pies. Observers paying homage to the West African slaves captured by the Dutch to work in their New World properties and to their freedom, their broken chains, as depicted in the park’s emancipation monument.

Amsterdam Emancipation Monument, Oosterpark, July 1, 2019

“Why doesn’t America have an event like this?” I asked my husband. “I mean, I know when the emancipation proclamation was written, sort of, but we don’t have a day that forces us to acknowledge that we had slavery. And that it ended. And until we do, we cannot begin to acknowledge and end the oppression of Black people in our country.”

It took the killing of George Floyd, and the massive public demonstration by Black people across this country indeed in Amsterdam as well as many other places around the world to, remind me last year that there is such a day on the calendar. It is called Juneteenth, a day that commemorates June 19, 1865 the day Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston Texas to enforce the emancipation proclamation, more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln’s act had taken affect.

New York State, my old employer, made Juneteenth a state holiday last year.

This new public holiday will serve as a day to recognize the achievements of the black community, while also providing an important opportunity for self reflection on the systemic injustices that our society still faces today.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo

It took another year of civil rights demonstrations, the ouster of Trump from the White House, and the election of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for Congress to enact the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act making Juneteenth a national holiday.

A day in which we remember the moral stain, the terrible toll that slavery took on the country and continues to take — what I’ve long called “America’s original sin.” At the same time, I also remember the extraordinary capacity to heal, and to hope, and to emerge from the most painful moments and a bitter, bitter version of ourselves, but to make a better version of ourselves.
President Joe Biden

It turns out that just having a holiday is not enough. My hospital roommate, a white woman whose alcoholism had caused her to tumble off her social pedestal, disdained the idea of attending the festival. “This is not for us,”she sniffed.

Keti Koti gives us not just a chance to celebrate the abolishment of slavery, it also celebrates the Surinames community and all the colour and pomp they bring to the Dutch way of life. Without them and their ancestors, the Netherlands wouldn’t be what she is today.In all we do, let us respect them, honour them and do all we can to make sure that history never repeats itself.
Beejonson, Dutch web content blogger

Wellness Wednesday: How I celebrated my second anniversary of being alive

May 5, 2021May 6, 2021raisedintheforeignservice 4 Comments

As I sipped my first cup of coffee this morning, I checked for the Amsterdam time. It was about two in the afternoon, two years ago to the hour from when my heart stopped on May 5, 2019.

My second anniversary

We’d just crossed the Atlantic on a Holland America cruise ship and should have been at Keukenhof Gardens but my husband had bronchitis, so we had stayed in Amsterdam to pick up medicine when I fainted on the sidewalk.
The EMTs arrived quickly, but my vital signs were within normal range and I told them I felt perfectly fine. Of course I did not feel perfectly fine. I’d had several days of cramping in my abdomen but I had been ignoring it, focused as I was on the next leg of our journey and a reunion with family at the Oslo Opera. “Take us back to the ship,” I commanded.

The ship doctor would not let us back on board unless we signed waivers relieving Holland America of the responsibility for our actions. I was determined, R was sick, and getting back to our room seemed like the only thing to do. We signed the waivers and got to the room, but when R returned with lunch 15 minutes later I was sprawled on the bed, semi conscious. This time, the decision was made for us — the ship doctor and his staff, along with a new set of EMTs, evacuated us off the ship within minutes. Although I understand I must have been unconscious, I remember someone saying as I was rolled into the ER at OLVG Hospital, “We are starting CPR.”

Imagine my poor husband watching this drama unfold, sitting in the ER lounge with our luggage and still very, very sick himself.

Surviving

The ER team identified a ruptured arterial aneurysm in my abdomen as the reason for my condition, and they quickly performed a clamping procedure that stopped the leak. However, the amount of blood in my abdomen had already begun to wreak havoc with my organs, and I spent the next six weeks in the ICU as my body fought off failure.

Our daughter and my sister flew to be at my husband’s side through these very long and dark weeks, and they were supported by the remarkably compassionate OLVG doctors and nurses and the extended family of another ICU patient. These dear people became our friends forever — I just mailed them some gifts.

Recovering

When I was discharged to the hospital’s gastroenterology unit, I had lost 30% of my bodyweight and the ability to move. The doctors told me that I might not have made it at all had I not been strong, the result of teaching water exercise to fellow retirees in Florida. The lifetime exercise habit gave my body the muscle memory it needed as I slowly recovered my ability to move, then to stand, then to walk.

R and I flew to Florida at the end of July, where the University of Florida Shands Hospital took over my care and confirmed that I was strong enough to continue my recovery as an outpatient. I shuffled down my neighborhood sidewalk using a walker and then a cane, and regained my ability to walk unassisted through physical therapy. We even joined a gym, and then, just weeks before my first anniversary, the pandemic hit.

Living

Quarantine did not stop me. My walks got longer and faster. The hand weights came out from the closet. I worked out on Zoom with my sister’s Colorado fitness instructor. We bought a stationary bike. I swam in our community pool and jogged in the ocean.

I have regained, maybe even surpassed, my May 5, 2019 strength and resilience. My next Shands checkup is in July, and we’re expecting me to be discharged.

Gratitude

I really wasn’t sure how I was going to celebrate this day. But then, I got a surprise call from Marsha, who was the first person to entrust me with being her personal trainer in the water. Marsha had just finished a water exercise class with an instructor who was filled with joy and enthusiasm, the feeling that I hoped to impart with every class when I was teaching. The repetition of exercises we’d worked on together, the freedom of moving in water and connecting with others — well, she simply had to call me.

As we caught up with each others lives, I was filled with gratitude for Marsha and all my former students who helped me to be strong enough to survive in 2019. We have made it through this awful pandemic year and will see each other over breakfast or in a pool when conditions permit. We are in each other’s lives, and that is a wonderful thing.

Indeed, I am reminded, today and every day, that life is a wonderful thing.

Silk tulips at Amsterdam’s floating market

Travel Tuesday: Looking At The Dutch Tulips

April 13, 2021April 13, 2021raisedintheforeignservice Leave a comment

Visitors tiptoe through the tulips in Dutch virus test, wrote Mike Corder recently for the AP, documenting the opening of the famed Keukenhof Gardens for a lucky 5,000 people. It is one of hundreds of public venues that the Dutch government has allowed to reopen under strict conditions to evaluate whether rapid testing can safely help the country ease coronavirus restrictions amid rising levels of vaccinations and warmer weather.

This is a gift. It feels great today. It is beautiful weather anyway … but to walk through the tulips is fantastic!
Corder quotesWritingBerries blogger Berry de Nijs, who shared the following picture on her WritingBerries Facebook page. Dank, Berry!

Dutch blogger Berry De Nijs posted this photo of the tulips in Keukenhof Gardens after her recent visit.

On May 5, 2019, we were scheduled to spend the day at Keukenhof Gardens when our cruise ship stopped in Amsterdam for the day before sailing on to Norway to complete a three-week cross-Atlantic voyage. We had missed the brief tulip season when we were in Amsterdam 2018, catching glimpses of the flowers only at the floating market during our week-long stay, so we’re really looking forward to seeing the 7 million tulips, hyacinths, daffodils and myriad other flowers meticulously hand-planted throughout Keukenhof’s manicured lawns by a small army of gardeners.

Photos by Jane Kelly Amerson López, 2018

But, through one of the zillion of timing miracles that allow me to tell you this today, we were not among the tulips on May 5, 2019, when I fainted on an Amsterdam sidewalk. We were outside a pharmacy getting medication for my husband’s bronchitis. Quick response by EMTs had me in an ER within minutes just as my heart stopped. I had ruptured an undiagnosed aneurysm. OLVG Hospital’s expert intervention sealed the leak, but I would be in the ICU for six weeks as my body struggled to survive, and another six weeks in the gastroenterology unit as I slowly regained movement of my wasted limbs.

I celebrated my one-year anniversary back on my feet. But this year as I commemorate surviving and recovering, I am even more grateful to have been spared breast cancer, to be vaccinated, and to be the least interesting patient in my doctor’s roster.
There’s a whole lot to look forward to, maybe even tiptoeing through Kukenhof one day, while living in each moment.

Travel Tuesday: Experience Skating on Dutch Canals

February 16, 2021February 16, 2021raisedintheforeignservice Leave a comment

Trapped between the winter storm and high pressure to its east, South Florida stood out like a chili pepper on nationwide temperature maps Monday-a red hot poker against the cooler hues of blues and purples.
Kimberly Miller, The Palm Beach Post

Skating is back in holland

Anne’s skating video

While we are basking in beach weather, a polar vortex has dripped down on much of the United States and Europe, sending temperatures plunging. However, while others shiver indoors, the Dutch have rejoiced in the return to skating on canals.

My friend Anne, one of the dear nurses who cared for me as I recovered from a near-fatal illness in Amsterdam, wrote me to share the joy of recovering this national winter sport.

For the first time in more than 10 years we really had a winter!!! I was skating today on the canal and thought of you. I wanted you to taste a little bit of our Dutch culture.
Anne Berkhout, OLVG nurse

Ice is not good everywhere

When ice skating is your national sport, it stands to reason that the Dutch would have terms for all the related activities.

This picture of us crawling on our knees is called “klunen” in Dutch. If the ice is too weak, you have to go by foot or knee so that you don’t fall through the ice.
Anne Berkhout, OLVG nurse

But when you DO fall through the ice, you become a Twitter sensation under the hashtag “Ice is not good everywhere.”

#Amsterdam #ijsnietoveralgoed #keizersgracht pic.twitter.com/mhZAuCQ9x6
— Geertje (@ikkomuitdrenthe) February 14, 2021

Perhaps we’ll skate together

Maybe someday you can see this with your own eyes and skate with us!!
Anne Berkhout, OLVG nurse

My ice skates, which I wore for many winters in upstate New York, are in my Florida bedroom closet, so who knows? It’s Anne’s passion for life that I treasure. So many enthusiastic, tall, smiling people are certainly something I’d love to experience again.

However, I also hope that Anne can someday join us around our lanai fire pit under the palm trees.

Weekend Wildcard: How to Walk With Angels

February 14, 2021raisedintheforeignservice Leave a comment

There are angels who never were people, and then there are angels that are people whom God has chosen to deliver a message or complete a task here on earth.
Rabbi Marc Gelman

In 2019, doctors and nurses in Amsterdam’s OLVH Hospital saved my life, and the hospital chapel inspired my recovery with soul-catching music when all I could do was barely sit upright in a wheelchair.

This Valentine’s Day, I walked four miles listening to that music by Tom Lowenthal and thanking all the angels that brought me back into life.

The ER nurse who I heard say she was starting CPR as I was rolled into OLVG. My heart had stopped. I cannot have heard her. I guess angels have special powers to reach the dead.
The radiology doc who knew how to reach and seal the abdominal artery rupture.
The recovery room nurse who realized that my body was failing.
The ICU doctors and nurses that refused to let me give up for six long weeks.
The gastroenterology team on 7A who believed I would walk onto a plane six weeks later.
The doctors and nurses at the University of Florida Shands Hospital who pronounced me recovered.
The physical therapist who knew I would jog again.
The nurse practitioner who taught me the pelvic floor exercises and gave me back my confidence

Say yes to life. Say yes to miracles.
Rabbi Marc Gelman

Some of the wonderful staff at OLVG Hospital in Amsterdam who cared for and about me

How Our Superhero Daughter Saved Our Lives

January 27, 2021raisedintheforeignservice 2 Comments

Superheroes, the comic book characters, have become big box office draws. From Batman to Spider Man, from Wonder Woman to Elastigirl, these modern versions of mythological figures are endowed with special powers — strength, flexibility, the power of flight, extra-sensory perception — that vanquish the super villains. Superheroes make the world a better place.

My husband and I have a special superhero who’s saved our lives in a dramatic way at three critical junctures, not with super powers but by just showing up. Our hero is our daughter.

Our superhero made us parents in Albany

We have one child. She appeared as a little cross on a white stick one January day in 1992, when I was 37 and we’d given up hope of my getting pregnant.

Her birth made us a family. Her childhood brought us joy.

Her persistence, patience, intelligence, and heart helped her emerge into adulthood as the first doctor in our extended family.

Our superhero held our hands in Amsterdam

Our daughter’s birth was my only hospitalization — until May, 5, 2019, when I was struck down by an undiagnosed arterial aneurysm while on vacation in Amsterdam.

Our daughter flew in the next day, along with my sister. They held up my husband while his world was crashing, and our daughter was at my bedside in the ICU for the six frightening weeks.

When I was strong enough to travel back to Florida, it was our daughter who made it possible to transfer to Shands Hospital, whose excellent care has deemed me well-recovered.

Our superhero signed us up for the vaccine in Palm Beach County

This morning, our daughter did it again, by signing my husband and me up to get the coronavirus vaccine.

It’s a Hunger Games scenario in Florida, with millions of people over 65 trying to get a limited supply of vaccine with minimal public health infrastructure and conflicting messaging. I sent the recommended email to the Palm Beach Health Department more than a month ago, finally receiving an acknowledgement a couple of weeks ago, then silence. Now, Governor DeSantis has pulled the rug out from under the county by assigning all vaccines to a grocery store chain which began assigning appointments a week ago in a 6AM web game with a limited door. All appointment were taken while I waited for two hours to get in. It’s been an exhausting week.

This morning, our daughter also logged as she ate her breakfast. And, just minutes before her long day of work, she got access to the site and signed my husband and me up. We receive the first vaccine tomorrow morning and the second one in a month. She’s done it again.

There are superheroes all around us

There are superheroes all around us, in truth. People going out of their way to help their neighbors. First responders. The kid featured in Inauguration Day’s Celebrating America who made $53,000 from her virtual lemonade stand to feed the hungry. Maybe you.

I thank you all.

How ICU Survivors Are Haunted by their Dreams

January 1, 2021January 10, 2021raisedintheforeignservice 2 Comments

The dark nightmares that take over the minds of terribly sick patients can become the happy dreams of recovery.

i had icu psychosis

As I was battling death in the intensive care unit of OLVG hospital in Amsterdam, I believed my dreams or, rather, my nightmares. I believed an evil nurse was torturing me in secret. I believed that the patient lying in the other bed in my room had thrown lye on the face of his daughter, scarring her for life. I saw the staff yell at him for being so evil and yell at his family for being enablers, throwing them out when they gathered to picnic on his bed. I whispered these revelations to my daughter, to my husband, to my sister. They had befriended these people and needed to know the truth of what was going on.

Of course, the truth was not at all what I thought. The ICU nurses were the picture of competence. The Turkish man in the next bed was desperately ill from a botched stomach-stapling procedure. His daughter Yasemin’s dark eyes and full lips sat I disturbed on her beautiful face. Her mother, brother, and the rest of the family had befriended my inconsolable husband when I lay in the ER bleeding to death. The friendship had become closer than family during the intervening awful days.

The delirium brought on by trauma and drugs put me into nightmares that bled through to my few minutes of semi-lucidity. I had ICU psychosis.

Covid patients suffer from icu psychosis

In The Plague Year, an extensive New Yorker piece on America’s experience with the coronavirus pandemic, Lawrence Wright touches on ICU psychosis in his description of COVID patient Chris Rogan. After being placed in a medically-induced coma and intubated for nine days, the 29-year-old told his wife that he’d been stabbed as a child. Just before he was intubated again, he felt certain he would die in the hospital. He didn’t wake up for 61 days, during which he believed he spoke with God. He survived, but when he finally left the hospital, he’d lost a leg to blood clots and the ability to move.

As he struggles to live with his impaired body, Chris Rogan clings to the belief that God spoke to him, psychosis or not.

Positive experience has overcome the psychosis

I didn’t experience death, a beckoning light, or God, just elaborate nightmares that seared indelible images into my brain. However, they no longer feel true. A critical part of my rehabilitation has been the accumulation of positive experiences that outweigh the bad dreams. The helplessness of the ICU has morphed into solid self-confidence as I engage in daily exercise. The black tunnel of despair has morphed into the blue skies of hope as the South Florida sun shines on my face. And the Turkish family we knew in the ER and ICU has become part of those new experiences, thanks to electronic media.

Yasemin gave us the good news through Facebook that her father has healed. She and her husband had a beautiful baby girl on America’s Independence Day. I spoke with them during the launch of my story Surviving Amsterdam in Kaleidoscope Wojo’s book, In Her Shoes. My husband sent a thank you card to the family matriarch whose warm empathy carried him through the dark days in the ICU. We heard that the card brought her to tears.

I am hopeful for the future

Although the rollout of the vaccine has had a bumpy start in Amsterdam and in Palm Beach County, we are confident that we — and our friends in Holland — will receive the life-restoring shot before long. When the pandemic is over, we hope to travel to Amsterdam to be with them all in person, or to welcome them to our sunny home for a tropical vacation.