| Brad and Jen's journal entry for: December 21, 2001 page 2 |
| Page 2, We arrived in Hue on Monday, December 17th. It was rainy and cooler and were excited about being in a new city and moving closer to heading to Loas. We checked in the hotel, ate dinner with some new friends and played pool in a local bar. Brad almost ran the table on a local while Jen told her friends "I have never seen Brad play pool before!" Bus rides always iritated Brad's eye, so we hoped he would wake up the next morning feeling better. He did not. The eye was again swollen and painful producing many tears. We immedaitely emailed our Doctor back home and made contact with a local Doctor through the hotel. He did a room visit to our hotel and diagnosed it as a viral infection. This seemed to make sense. He searched the eye and sped off to get a new round of meds. He said he would be back in 20 minutes, but he did not return for 2 hours. He said he had to run all over town to find the right meds. The rap on Vietnam Doc's is they do not always give you what you need, but what they have. It was nice to have him put in such an effort. Again, Brad sat in a dark room (denying the urge to jump off the balcony and contiuing the longest ever losing streak of solitare), while Jen ran errands. She has said that this may turn out to be a confidence booster, because now she knows she could travel alone and take care of all the business. The next day Jennifer went with her new friends, Petra and Denise (from Finland), went on a boat tour of the city. Petra and Denise taught Brad four new solitaire games, so he was prepared to sit in the dark room for yet another day. The eye was making slight progress, and the boat trip was a bust. Later that day Jen took a picture of the eye and we decided it was time to make other plans. Our Doctor from the States had recommended that we should possibly head to Singapore due to the protracted nature of the infection. The next morning we awoke early, the eye still painful and decided it was time to move. Jen made immediate plans for us to take a bus back to Danang that afternoon with a flight to Bangkok the following morning. She emailed the Atlanta Hotel in Bangkok asking them to save us a room, and emailed our insurance company. All of Jen's plans worked out perfectly and our friend Roger held a room for us at the Atlanta. A couple hours after our arrival he even phoned our room to see if we needed help. It is good to have friends. We rested and went to the Bangkok Nursing Home Hospital today which has an internatioal travel clinic. We filled out one form at 9:30am, were escorted to a waiting room on the first floor, and were seeing the Doctor by 9:40am. She was extremely compassionate, knowlegdable and helpful! She listened to our story, did not think the viral diagnoses sounded right and checked out Brad's eye. This hospital is as good as any we have ever been to. The problem: she found that there was a 3mm piece of clear plastic embedded in the center of Brad's cornea. On a couple of occasions during the infection, Jen thought she saw something in Brad's eye. But since it was clear we just thougth it was due to the infection. The other Doctor's had cleared the infections out but we needed a specialist to examine the eye. She said Brad is very lucky. We will return next Friday to see if the scratch is healing properly. If scar tissure develops she will start a course of steriods. She is hopefull that Brad's eyesight will clear up in two weeks. We are just happy to have the correct answer! We are happy to be in Bangkok for the holidays. It is a more comfortable place now and we feel like we know it pretty well. If all heals well, we may be able to head to Loas in January, and are looking forward to making plans to head to Nepal in late February.. The journey continues. We miss you all and will be spending Christmas by the pool in the sunny 85 degree weather. Love and peace, Jennifer and Brad Click here for pictures of Hue and Brad's deadly eye Click here for pictures of Nha Trang and Hoi An |