It's taken me awhile to get round to posting this blogpost. Two weeks have passed since we arrived back but I am only now getting back into the normal swing of things. There has been a huge amount of catching up to do and I had to go to Durban two days after arriving home to check on Little Bean.
Now to the drama of the holiday.....
It all started on Friday the 1 Feb. Ewan had a slight sniffle but was bouncy enough to head off to school full of talk about the big plane he was going on that night. We had a long 6 hour drive to the airport thanks to roadworks but all was well. Everyone was in a good mood as we checked in our bags and Ewan was so excited. He wanted a ticket of his own so the kind lady gave him a luggage tag.
We had a light supper and I bought some cough medicine at the pharmacy.
At 9pm we boarded the plane. Ewan was super happy and settled down to watch a movie. The plane was fairly empty and about an hour after take off we had all spread out a bit to try and get some rest.
Three hours into the flight Ewan has a massive coughing fit. The kind that ends in screams and tears. Everything went downhill from there.
It took ages to calm him down. I managed to get some medicine in but it didn't help. An hour latter he was running a massive temp. He then vomited all over my mother. The air hostess managed to find a first class sleep suit for her to wear.
We got some Calpol from the planes medi kit and he finally fell asleep.
Somewhere over North Africa the screaming, tears and coughing started again. We gave medicine again but this time he was having trouble breathing. Yes the kid gets viral asthma but no I did not see this coming from a slight sniffle. We didn't have his nebulizer as its huge and needs a 220volt plug so we don't fly with it.
Luckily for us the crew on the Virgin Atlantic flight were amazing. The one steward had medical training and although he was meant to be serving First Class he spent most of his flight in Economy helping us.
The pilot was informed and we had to keep an eye on Ewan as we could now land in Europe if he got worse. I did feel sorry for all the people around us they didn't get much sleep but mostly I was worried about Ewan. I just wanted to get to London so I could get to Boots Pharmacy at the airport and get the medicine we needed.
That wasn't how things worked out though....
This was an incident on board and as such we would need medical clearance to fly on to Miami.
On arrival in Heathrow we were met by paramedics, Virgin Atlantic ground crew and immigration.
They decided to send Ewan to the nearest hospital as he was still wheezing. After a nebulizer at the airport, sorting out emergency visas with very helpful immigration staff Andrew, Ewan and I were bundled into an ambulance.
My frantic parents had to go through to fly onto Miami without us.
The weather in London was freezing. I had a thin jersey for the flight with me and that was it. I didn't even have long pants for Ewan. VA gaves us the red blanket the Ewan had been sleeping with on the flight and that was a lifesaver and a source of comfort along with his stuffed Mickey.
Hillingdon NHS hospital has to be one of the most depressing places on the planet.
We were seen by a Doctor after two hours waiting which is apparently quite fast. Ewan was given an inhaler and we were told to wait for three hours to see if he improved. We still had hope of making our flight at this point.
He started coughing again just before the three hour mark.
I phoned Virgin Atlantic and organised for us to be moved to the next days Miami flight.
The next Doctor moved us into another section of the A&E. Ewan was given another inhaler and we waited out another three hours. This time he slept a bit of the time. Mostly though he was feeling better so he was super chirpy. In fact he was sitting on the floor trying to fix broken toys from the waiting room.
He was still a bit chesty but nothing drastic when they checked again. We were looking at hotel rooms for the night in the Heathrow area. Luckily we didn't book anything because when the next Doctor arrived he booked us into the hospital for the night. The arrogant young guy also wanted us to stay in London for the week. He kept saying that he didn't understand the problem as London has lots of hotels and he would be happy for Ewan to fly out in a week. I was yelling and seeing red by this stage.
Ewan has had viral asthma since he was a year old. He takes the meds and then he is fine. The only reason he ever had to stay in hospital was because it turned to pneumonia. We are his parents and know how this works after many episodes.
The Doctor did not get that this would cost us thousands of rands and that we would just have to throw away all the money we had spent booking a hotel in the States, Disney tickets and a host of other fun things for Ewan.
I just wanted to cry. We had to fly via a Nanny State like the UK.
We were told we could have a family room... what that actually was.. ahem... was a small pull out chair next to Ewan's bed in a huge ward with other kids and a tiny waiting room that I was allowed to sleep in.
At this stage Ewan had gone 5 hours without an inhaler and was fine. So the next Doctor put him back on a three hour schedule. We had to go fours before we could be released. So we got to spend a night in a cold, damp and dingy little hospital.
Andrew and I were at our wits end. We couldn't get past the Doctors and they wanted us to stay. My poor parents were sitting in a hotel in Miami having to book an extra night there and not able to go anywhere as my Dad is no longer willing to try driving on the wrong side of the road.
I hardly slept that night.
The next day I suggested to the Doctor that instead of waiting another day to fly to Miami only on Monday... the cost of staying in London for us and another night in Miami for my parents plus all the money we were throwing away with our prebooked and paid for accomodation was filling my mind.... that we take a late night flight out of London to NYC instead of Miami. It's a shorter flight and they fly pretty close to land the whole way.
Amazingly the Doctor agreed. By the time they let us go however we had missed the Miami flight...curses!!!
So I phoned Virgin Atlantic and they put us on the next flight to NYC. No extra charges. I was constantly amazed by how friendly and helpful the VA staff were. They could have charged us 585GBP for that.
So we got into a taxi with Ewan still wrapped in his little red blanket and high tailed it to the airport.
We booked in on the NYC flight leaving in two hours. We had gotten away from the Doctors and we would be in NYC 6 hours earlier then we had told them. I felt like a fugative.
Now we had to find a way from NYC to Miami. The only flight leaving after 7:30pm when we would be landing was a JetBlue flight to Fort Lauderdale which is 70km from Miami but we did not want to spend the night in snow filled New York so we booked the flight. It left at 9pm so we did not have a huge amount of time to clear customs.
To add to our misery the flight cost $850. Ouch.
Our flight from Heathrow left twenty miuntes late and we flew into a strong headwind. We now would only have 30 min to make the flight or our money would be lost.
Ewan meanwhile fell asleep as the plane took off and was totally fine. He didn't even cough once.
I spoke to the head steward and twenty minutes before landing we got moved to seats in business class to be closer to the exit.
We had made up some time on the flight and we now had just under an hour to make the flight.
When we landed we got off the plane first and a member of the ground crew helped us through the terminal and even helped fill in forms.
We got through customs in ten minutes. My parents luggage which was sent with us was first off the plane.
I ran pushing the cart while Andrew ran holding Ewan. We got to terminal 5 as they were shutting the check in desk.
Luckily we had all the paperwork ready and we got checked in and made it to the gate just before they shut the airside door. It was -4 degrees but we were sweating like pigs. The air hostess brought us cold bottled water. I don't think in my life I have ever felt so relieved.
Ewan slept and played through the three hour flight quite happily.
We arrived in Miami after an $80 taxi ride from the airport just after 1am. It took about an hour for me to stop shaking and calm down enough to pass out.
It was a complete nightmare of a trip.
The next day we discovered Andrew's old passport that holds his US visa was missing. We had dropped it in JFK. They lady at the hotel reception told us to phone JFK lost and found. Typical jaded South Africans we had given up the passport as permanetly lost so we spent the morning phoning the South African Consulate - no help at all- and they told us Andrew needed to fly back to Durban to have his visa reissued. Everything was going downhill again. In the end Andrew tried JFK and guess what... they had his passport and it was couried to us three days later. First world!!
Poor Andrew's bag was still missing thanks to all the mess with our flights. It was found three days later and sent to us in Orlando. Sadly his camera had been stolen but the thief did leave his memory card.
So that was a long post I know. It was a truly horrible start to the trip. We are currently waiting for our travel insurance to pay out for all the money we had to fork out on this trip. Ewan's hospital stay was close to R20000.
Its taken me awhile to get that post out as its filled with very mixed emotions.
In the next post I will put up the fun part of the holiday Disney and the Cruise.
However when we got home I still felt drained and the world is only slowly starting to come together.
