Day #45 - Istanbul to St. Louis travel day

Wednesday, April 28th

At the end of my blog from yesterday, I alluded to the fact that I had to take a little trip today. Well, I did take a trip from Istanbul to St. Louis, MO. I'm writing this blog from my sister's house in St. Louis here on Friday morning (April 30th). Before going any further, no worries, I'm OK and will be fine.

Let me explain. Have you ever heard of shingles? If not, that's a very good thing. If so, maybe your aunt has had these, maybe your mom, or perhaps your grandparents. Shingles is an adult form of the chicken pox. Lucky me, about 5 years ago, I had the shingles while working in medical sales in Minnesota. Unusual for a person of my age. But, this is a viral condition that can attack a body when the immune system is down. The fact that I was often burning the midnight oil putting some undue stress on myself, I ended up with the shingles. It started out as a major back pain for me. I remember standing in the OR one morning in Alexandria, MN in a functional endoscopic sinus surgery. The case was lasting forever and I was commenting to another rep in the room that I may need to sit down because my back is killing me. This was unusual for me. The pain continued and the next few days I experienced numbness, tingling, and burning sensations isolated to the left side of my body. I also had fever and flu-like symptoms during all this. A few days later, I began to form a rash from my spinal cord on my left side to my mid-line on my stomach. Classic shingles -- a single nerve effected which begins with pain, numbness, and then results in a rash on a single line effecting only 1 side of the body. I rested and was fine within a few days. I don't recall really missing any work.

Alright, I say this above, only because it leads me to where I am today. I've mentioned on earlier blogs the fact that my body was shutting down a bit. Well, I was feeling many of the same symptoms that I had experienced 4 years ago - and I was just starting to get a few red spots on me. The last few days I haven't done much. I took trains as much as I could and rested often. Now, if this was shingles, that wouldn't be great, but I could handle it.

However, as I had been experiencing numbness and tingling on my left side, then, I started to feel this on my right side as well. This was scaring me a bit. I have a friend who had Multiple Sclerosis - the first indication that she had the disease was numbness in her arms and legs. Anyway, my sister is a nurse and I communicated my conditon to her via Skype. She works at a cardiologist office in St. Louis. Her doctor has close ties to a neurological specialist. As my sister is awesome, she spoke to both doctors about me (actually called them while we were on Skype and the doctor could hear me saying my symptoms) and they both concluded that I shouldn't mess around with this and see someone right away.

I was sitting in my hotel room in Instanbul, Turkey on Tuesday (April 27th) evening about 10pm. I do have medical insurance that I got for this trip for times just like this. However, I'm in Istanbul, Turkey. What do you do? The neurologist in St. Louis told my sister a story that one of the leaders of Turkey had recently come to the US to seek his medical care because he did not trust what Turkey could offer. Good enough for me. If this was a cold or something easy, I'd go to the hospital in Turkey. I considered flying back to Paris or London to see a specialist. Because my sister said the doctor was concerned with possible complications with a shingles condition, I got on Travelocity and booked a flight back to the US. I got a flight leaving Istanbul at 6:55am on Wednesday morning to arrive in St. Louis at 5:05pm on Wednesday night. In less then 9 hours, I was set to fly back to the US.

Now, I sat there in my bed, more than scared about the situation, in a remote country, by myself, on the other side of the world. I had Skype so I was able to talk with my parents and sister. I knew there would be no sleeping for me on Tuesday night. I had to be in a cab at 4:30am to get to the airport. I just needed to make that flight.

I got through the night and made it to the airport. By this time, I really didn't know how I was feeling. I was just in a daze. I took the 6:55am flight to Madrid, Spain to arrive at 10:30am. All goes great. We got there on target. Next flight - Madrid, Spain to Chicago, IL. Flight leaves on time at 12noon. All is going well to this point. Then, 45 minutes into the flight, an announcement comes over the loud speaker: "If there is a doctor on board, can you please come to the front of the plane" OK - no big deal - I've heard them say this before on flights. I'm good - just stay calm. Next, a guy from a couple rows behind me runs up to the front. 10 minutes go by. Another announcement: "Ladies and gentlemen, we are going to turn the plane around and will be landing in Madrid in about 30 minutes" Woo - I've never had this happen before.

We land and everyone is asked to stay on the plane. About an hour or so goes by and the announcement comes: "We will now be refueling and then will be taking off again within the next 30 minutes." The guy who had run to the front, comes back to sit behind me now. He's a doctor and speaks English. He begins to tell the story to a few people around him. A guy, around 35 years old, just had a heart attack on take-off. He's going to make it - he's lucky we were able to turn around. I'm sitting there listening to this. I have a headache, my left side is tingling/little numb, and I have a few dots forming on my waistline. Deep breaths - remain calm. I actually think my state of complete exhaustion played to my favor. I couldn't get too upset - I was too tired. Only problem now, my flight was going to land in Chicago at 4pm - I was going to miss my flight to St. Louis.

My sister was to pick me up at the airport at 5:30pm. I had provided her with all my flight itinerary, all the flight numbers, etc. She would be able to find out that my second leg of the 3 leg journey was delayed - surely? After the heart attack issue, the remaining flight to Chicago was OK. It turned into a 12 hour flight instead of a 9 hour flight. When I arrived at O'Hare Airport, I had to go through the passport line. It was a 45 minute wait. I then was sent to the American Airlines booth to get my reticket to St. Louis. Now, my arrival time was going to be 8pm. I knew I had to get to a phone - quickly. Since I had been communicating via Skype my whole trip, and I didn't have a cell phone, I didn't know my sister's number by heart. I called my mom. Needless to say, she was slightly freaked out by now. I felt aweful. I did not mean to cause anxiety to my whole family, but unfortunately, that's exactly what I had done. My sister was unable to find out that my second leg was delayed as the Iberia Airlines website was having technical problems. All they knew - the flight from Chicago that I was supposed to be on, was on time, and I was not on that flight.

Oh-boy -- I was a walking zombie at this point. My flight from Chicago was delayed about 30 minutes on the tarmac and I arrived into St. Louis around 8:30pm. My sister was at the baggage claim waiting for me. She was a mess - I think I took 2 years off her life with worry. She was sure that I would be coming out in a wheelchair or worse. So, I was in St. Louis, and had just created some major tension for my whole family. I wasn't feeling much of anything by this point. All I knew - I hadn't slept for about 48 hours, and I just had travelled the past 20 hours on flights and delays from the other side of the world to be here right now.

On Thursday, I had an appointment with a neurologist at 12noon. He did every test on me known to man. I was with him for nearly 2 hours. He ruled out most everything. He concluded that I probably had some funky bacteria that I could have picked up from my travels. This could have caused the rash and my current sickness. The nerve condition was likely something created by my carrying the heavy pack - pinching the nerves to create the numbing condition. The weight loss only aided in the nerve exposure. The bacterial sickness worsened the conditons as a whole. I was put on antibiotics, went to hosptial to get blood drawn, and told to rest.

It's Friday morning right now, and I'm resting. Feeling better. I think the diagnosis itself made me feel a million times better. I think I was making myself sick with worry. Still waiting for the blood tests to come back, but the doctor, who is highly respected, gave me the pass for any major neurological illness. I was told to take the antibiotics, rest, and see him in 2 weeks. I told him that I have a return flight on May 9th - can I make it? He said, "Just rest and give it time - we'll see"

So anyway, it has taken me a while to accept this. Am I a big baby to run home when feeling a little sick? But you know what, it's OK. Say it out loud, "I'm experiencing some pretty strange symptoms, I'm in a remote area of the world, I need to get checked out so I can continue this trip feeling strong" Yeah - that sounds pretty good. I think coming back was a good call. If things continue to progress well, I'll be returning next Sunday, May 9th - back to Istanbul. End result, I'm taking a short 12-day sabbatical from my 300-day sabbatical. It's a competitive pitstop - like my brother-in-law said. I can take this time to tweak some things and get a strategy for my return, and be better for it.

I'm going to stop blogging during my time in St. Louis. I will defintely pick this up on Sunday, May 9th on my return. Don't worry about me - I'll be OK - this is all part of the expereince. I look forward to coming to you live from Europe in a few days. Hang on - the really good stuff hasn't started yet.