Day 335, Year 7: The Unexpected
Date: Monday, October 8, 2012
Weather: Partly Sunny Morning, Turning Cloudy; Temp in the 50’s
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
Picture this. It is late afternoon and Mark is standing on a ladder on the
back deck trying to connect the new Ham radio antenna wire to the backstay.
I look up to see how he is doing and he’s talking on the phone! Then I hear
him say, “We’ll meet you at the hospital emergency room as soon as we can
get there.” All I could imagine was that one of the kids had done something
crazy and broken a bone or gotten a bad cut. But it was Jed, not the kids.
We had seen him an hour earlier when we went over to borrow the ladder Mark
was using and Jed was getting ready to drive up to the Sagamore Bridge to
catch a bus to Logan Airport in Boston. He was supposed to be flying to
England tonight. But as he was driving north to the bridge, he had what
appeared to be an asthma attack and had to stop the car and call 911 to have
an ambulance come and get him. He was having difficulty breathing. This is
not what I expected. Jed has never had an ashma attack. He is terribly
allergic to solvents, epoxy, and a few other things and has had to go to the
emergency room when exposed to those. But that was not the case today. The
short story is that by 10 pm he was back home and doing fine and he will fly
to England tomorrow. The longer story is that earlier in the day he had
worked on the exhaust system of Heather’s old Honda. He thought he had it
patched up good enough to drive it to Sagamore to catch the bus. He was
going to just leave it there so he would have a way home next Sunday when he
returns. As he started driving, he realized that the patch didn’t hold and
he had to open all the windows as there was exhaust coming into the car from
under the floor. Then he started having the breathing problems and had to
stop and call 911. When we got to the hospital, Heather was already there
with the three boys. Jonah was wearing boxer shorts and frog rain boots.
Sam was in shorts and rain boots. I should have taken a picture. The boots
were by the door and since Heather was in a bit of a hurry and the boots
were handy, she just told them to put them on and get in the van. At least
Jonah had a pair of jeans with him, so we got him dressed and took the boys
to get something to eat. They had already seen their dad and didn’t really
want to leave him, but they did need to eat. We tried the hospital
cafeteria but they were offering only two entrees, neither of which either
boy would eat. But they really didn’t want to leave the hospital, so Sam
said he would eat noodles and cooked carrots. Jonah, however, just couldn’t
do that. So Sam suggested we go to nearby Cape Cod Bagels and have
breakfast for dinner. We tried that, but they were closed. Jonah was very
upset and was sure that if we drove any further, I would get lost and not be
able to get them back to the hospital. Sam assured him that we could find
our way back, so we decided to go to McDonald’s to get chicken nuggets and
French fries-not a healthy dinner, but one I knew they would eat. We got
back to the hospital around 7 pm and Heather told the boys that we were all
going home and that daddy would be able to come home later in the evening.
The doctor was checking all systems to try and figure out what had happened,
but in the end the doctor thinks the incident was related to the RSV
(respiratory syncytial virus) that we all have. Either the cool air or the
exhaust triggered the coughing, and things went from there. Heather drove
the boys home and Mark and I drove to the car that had been left on the side
of the road and got Jed’s luggage and backpack with his brand new, very
expensive work computer. He surely didn’t want that left in the car
overnight. When we got back to Heather’s, we helped get the boys to bed and
then around 9:30 pm Jed called and said he had been released and could go
home. I went to pick him up. The events of the evening were all
unexpected, but thankfully everything turned out fine.
I spent my morning sanding and varnishing the Dorade boxes one more time and
I also decided to put another coat of varnish on part of the cockpit cap
rail. That might have been a mistake as there is supposed to be rain
tonight and there is no way to protect the section I did. While I did this,
Mark worked on adjusting the rigging. It was tightened in Grenada, and
slowly since then, Mark has felt that it needed to be loosened some. He
also spent a great deal of time removing rusty parts from our dinghy anchor
chain. The swivel connector was a rusty mess. When the work was done we
had lunch, and then we drove into Falmouth to do some shopping and pick up
the ladder at Heather and Jed’s. And that brings us back to where this
story started.
We got an email from a reader from Louisiana today who could really use
those hurricane lines we are trying to get rid of. Bob, if you are reading
this, we just want you to know that we will email you in the morning. Not
sure how we could get the lines to you without huge shipping costs because
they are bulky and heavy. But we will look into it. It would be great to
find a home for them where they are needed. And thanks for being a loyal
reader.
