Zihuatanejo

Okay. It is about time for me to get back into the habit of blogging. Life has felt very crazy lately. Maybe you'll understand a bit more how I feel after I tell you about Mexico.

"Because nobody does it better than you."

This is Continental Airlines' slogan. I just want you to pause and reflect on it for a moment. Aren't I paying Continental to be better than me? I really hope the slogan doesn't refer to the pilots because I certainly pray they can do it better than I can. It does, however, refer to checking your own baggage, printing out your own tickets, pouring your own drinks, finding the new toilet paper roll in the bathroom, and paying your airport tax. This is exactly where we ran into a problem--an hour before we were supposed to take off. We were checking ourselves in when we discovered there was no record of our child in the computer. Now, even though she is a lap child, this presented a large problem with her international tax record. She was not allowed on the plane until she was internationally recognized...for $12.00. At this point, someone from Continental did have to step in and help us, and he spent nearly an hour waiting on the phone for someone to help him try to solve our problem. At first, I wasn't paying attention to the clock, but our babysitter pointed out that time was slipping away quite quickly and if Continental couldn't figure it out, we would not be going to Mexico that day. I was not yet resolved to believe that things would not work out in our favor and within 10 quick minutes, the guy waiting on the phone was talking to someone, we paid Huntleigh's airport tax, ran through security, and made it to our gate with a few minutes to spare. The Lord was gracious to us in that stressful moment. It's a good thing his motto is not the same as Continental's. Here's what we did after a crazy day of travel.





La Clinica Mediciel:

We arrived at our resort on Sunday afternoon and on Tuesday morning our sweet babysitter, Katie, said that she had been sick all night. We thought it would pass after a bit of rest, so she slept all morning with us going in to check on her from time to time. Katie was still napping after lunch, so we brought Huntleigh up to the room so they could nap together while we went to get a 50-minute massage. When we returned 55 minutes later, we heard these odd breathing noises coming from the room. I thought Katie might have just been having a bad dream, so I went to check on her and after verifying she was awake, she said to me in halted breath, "Can't....breathe....!" Seeing as neither Josh nor I are medically inclined, I called the front desk and told them that we had a medical emergency and would need a doctor. All of a sudden, there were about 8 people in our room, helping us attend to Katie with buckets of ice water to make cold towels while we waited for the doctor. She had spiked a fever of about 104 (we were crazily trying to convert from Celsius to Fahrenheit in the midst of the chaos) and her muscles were severely cramped. After two injections into her body (a muscle relaxant and a fever reducer) we ended up in an ambulance on our way to the hospital. Josh stayed behind with Huntleigh while Katie and I were zoomed off.

Josh and I both have international calling on our cell phones, so we were able to be in touch throughout the whole ordeal, but it was still somewhat unnerving. A gentleman, Andres, came with us who worked for our resort but was not a doctor. He spoke impeccable English and stayed with me for awhile, for which I am still so grateful. Katie suffered an electrolyte imbalance in the midst of severe dehydration and she had to spend two whole nights in the hospital, La Clinica Mediciel. She was attached to an IV with a potassium and a calcium drip the whole time. We listened to a handful of different doctors come in and give us their assessment of her situation in their varying forms of broken English. With Katie's recent year of Spanish and my two years in high school, we were able to get by for those few days. Katie was so brave. So much braver than I would have been, had it happened to me. The Lord really took care of us and provided for us in a situation that was completely beyond our control. We must say, though, that we were glad to be all back together in our resort on Thursday evening.

We drank a lot of bottled water the rest of the time we were there.