Big Hearted Dee

Monday, 17 August

With Dee resting in the hospital, Gene and I have all this free time to explore the city of Bologna. Apart from the Twin Towers (a building one of the characters in the Percy Jackson books talks about), we didn’t know what to see and really we wanted to rest between visiting hours with Dee.

The weekend is upon us and with a public holiday on Saturday (I thought that was a bit strange), the city was pretty deserted. It made driving through an Italian city pleasurable.

Bologna has a hospital precinct with hospitals building for each specialisation (cardiac, Pediatric, ocular, etc). One of the patients told me that Bologna was one of the best places to be sick in as they have the best hospitals in the area. It’s great the amount of care given but it makes it a bugger to walk to and from a car park that can take a camper. Such is life! It’s my exercise for the day.

Gene has been great throughout the whole experience, taking things as they come.

The hospital staff have ben lovely but not many people speak English which has been a bit frustrating for Dee, being a rather chatty sort of girl.

We have Springy for a quick see to. It’s been 10,000km since the last service but the mechanic says these vehicles should be right for one every 15,000. That’s great but I still need somethings looked at.

Our kitchen cabinet catch has finally failed on us and we have to rely on masking tape to hold it close until I can find a place to buy a new one (and possibly some spares). It makes going around sharp corners fun.

I was able to contact our travel insurance people and they are onto any possible hospital bills. We’re lucky that Australia and Italy have reciprocal medical agreements and any medical costs should be nil. That is a relief. We were worried that we may have to pay out the costs then seek reimbursement.

We’re currently hiding in McDonalds trying to use their wifi but to no avail, so I’m tpying this blog on a word document and I’ll copy and paste it later.

I was also hoping to see a few businesses about purchasing the correct shelves for our fridge but no-one is answering their phones. I have a sneaking suspicion that many businesses have a Sunday-Monday weekend.

We reviewed our trip and we don’t think we can make Venice now. Once Dee is released (hopefully today) we’ll be heading north to Innsbruck in Austria then West to Lichtenstein and Switzerland over the next week.

The weather has been much cooler over the last few days and we’re hoping it will continue as we head towards autumn. I even had to use a doona last night.

With the evening upon us, we have been informed that Dee has an enlarged heart (http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/enlarged-heart/basics/definition/con-20034346). I always knew she had a big heart but not in this way.

No idea what caused it or what type it is so far but we have a meeting tomorrow morning with the Chief Doctor to discuss it. There is medication they want to put her on which will involve being monitored in hospital for a couple of days.

The funny thing is we had to travel halfway around the world to find out what was wrong.

The good bits of the day are:

We now know what’s wrong.

We can begin treating / managing it and last and least

Springy had a bit of a service and is running much better.

Thank you to all the messages and well wishes, they are wonderful.