Author: Robin Chartier

I’m sitting in the hospital, on a bed, waiting for Carter’s surgery to start. Yes, I said surgery. The saga continues. I guess I should be thankful that I’m only stressed about logistics and not his medical condition.

After Eid was over the hospital finally called us back and I talked to a doctor and a nurse who both said, “yes, we looked at the MRI, we can remove the cyst and just call us back when you decide if you want to proceed or not.” I’m not sure how I can be more clear: let’s get this taken care of ASAP because I have a move that I’m in the middle of and this must be done before we leave the country or I’ll have to start all over again with new referrals, paperwork and headaches.

When they finally understood that I wanted to schedule the surgery, the nurse said first he had to come in for a consult with the anesthesiologist. Wait, what? I thought this was going to be a few shots of a local and a quick removal. I guess that’s not how things are done here. So I made a separate appointment to meet with the anesthesiologist, who stood us up because of an emergency, but we were able to get Carter’s bloodwork taken care of at the lab (3 vials taken for who knows what) so the visit wasn’t a total waste. Then we went back to the hospital two days later only to tell the doc that he has no allergies and no health problems and to be quizzed on his medical history.

It was at that appointment that the doc told me that Carter would be admitted to the hospital and needed to fast from both food and water because he would be given sedation that she called “sleepy medicine” and in my head I’m thinking, “This is insane. All this for a simple cyst that I swear is getting smaller by the day.” Because of course as soon as I got partway through this process it started shrinking. Or flattening. Or doing something that made it almost invisible (though it could still be felt  a bit under the skin). But I had to keep plowing ahead because the law of nature would have turned it into a golf ball sized tumor the moment we got on the plane to depart for Abu Dhabi if I didn’t get it taken care off.

So this morning we came to the hospital at the crack of 7:45 and completed the admission paperwork. They brought him up to his room and asked him to put on a gown, checked for a good vein for an IV and then as soon as he was ready they came in and asked him to put his clothes back on because they were going to move us downstairs because the doctor wanted him in a room where he could be admitted overnight if necessary. I have to stop being surprised by how thorough they are being. And I laughed when they showed us into the room that Calvin and I spent 3 days in back in May. Welcome home. We better not be here that long.

Carter regowned and we headed down to the operating room. I signed paperwork, the plastic surgeon came in and told me for the 3rd time how much easier this would be if he were going to remove it from the outside, but going from the inside complicates things — which is why I told him multiple times to do it from the outside because we don’t care if he has a little scar. But whatever. I had mentioned to the anesthesiologist that I would prefer that he not be sedated if he didn’t need it (because I think it makes for an easier recovery) and the surgeon did prefer that option as well. Thank God for that. So they rolled him away and I went check 3 more items off my moving list. No time to sit and wait.

90 minutes later I was back at the hospital and they had just brought him back to the room. He said it went well, he didn’t need the extra sedation and he was just annoyed that he had to wait another 2 hours to eat or drink. A bit of a puffy upper lip and a hep-lock are the only signs that anything was ever done.

I thought that I would have plenty of time over the past few days to write. Usually packing days are long and drawn out and don’t require much of me other than being there, but in this case it was like supervising a group of kindergarteners. The company arrived right on time with a crew of 8 and blew through my house like a tornado. Which would have been fine if they knew what they were doing, but I think half of them were first timers. And only 2 of them spoke any English. Which could have been fine, except when I’m trying to explain that the bulb of my Turkish lamp doesn’t need to be detached from the wiring . . . then it’s a problem. Thankfully I caught them before they did too much damage to it and Josh was able to fix it after spending an hour with pliers and a patient hand. Those were the kind of intervening actions I had to take all day. The first item they packed in my kitchen: A glass vase that I store cooking utensils in — I come in to find them wrapping paper around the vase with the items still standing up in the vase. When I had to show them how to take the items out and wrap them in a different sheet of paper than the glass, I knew that wasn’t a good sign.

Every item that was packed was wrapped thoroughly — loads of paper and bubble wrap, but they’d go through a closet and pack almost everything. Or pack a shelf and leave one book behind. I ended up following them around all day, tucking stray items into boxes or collecting the “spare parts” and putting them with the current job, hoping that the second time through they’d make the cut. It felt a bit like checking on my kids after they’ve “cleaned the kitchen” and thinking, did you not see this glass on the counter? Or the pot that’s still in the sink? How do you consider this job finished? 


So yeah, I’m tired and the job still isn’t done. They showed up saying they could do it in 2 days, but they spent 12 hours there yesterday and they’re on hour 12 today and still not finished so I’m annoyed. They should have just done it in 3 like they originally planned. I finally escaped and am at the hotel, Camille asleep next to me, while Calvin holds down the fort at the house because Josh had to go to the airport to pick up his replacement. Calvin is entertaining himself by posting progress updates to FB. Poor kid.

is turning into a pain in my ass. Carter has a small, hard lump under the skin on his upper lip. It’s probably a fatty deposit or an overgrowth of skin cells that should be a quick slice, extract and stitch, right? Not when dealing with our military heath insurance. Sure, they’ll cover it, supposedly, but I have to be willing to jump through 36 different hoops to get to the prize.

First an appointment with his primary care provider. She looked at it briefly and put in a referral to our insurance to have him seen at a local hospital (we only have a clinic here that does routine care and have to be referred out for anything beyond that). Go back to insurance company a few days later to find that they will only approve a dermatologist to look at it, not do anything to it. Yell at people on the phone in Germany. No luck because policy is policy and all that garbage. No matter that I live in a foreign country and it’s during Ramadan and no-one has normal working hours as a result. Sure, ask me to drag my kid all over the country to have various people all agree that this thing needs to be removed — when I could probably pay to have it done myself for under $100. At this point it’s the principle that they should pay for it and I’m not going to let them get out of it by making things difficult for me.

Go to the dermatologist at the local hospital a few days later. At 7:30 on a Saturday night, because Ramadan. 30 seconds into the appointment she can see that it needs to be removed and spends 3 minutes writing a report to take BACK to our insurance office with the recommendation that a plastic surgeon handle the removal. The doctor spent more time writing than looking at his face.

Another hoop jump successfully completed, I head back to the insurance office the next morning. The agent gets ready to scan the report and send it off to Germany so they can approve it, until I casually mention that if they had just agreed to have it removed like I wanted in the first place, then they wouldn’t be on the hook for paying a plastic surgeon to do it. The agent froze and repeated, “plastic surgeon? Oh, no. That requires a separate referral. I’m glad you mentioned it before I sent it off.” She then instructed me to go back to the doctor and ask her to write another referral to get plastic surgery approved. You’ve got to be kidding me.

Our poor pediatrician is overworked as it is, but she was quick to submit the new referral as we both laughed and agreed that if she had requested a plastic surgeon in the first place they would have denied it anyway. What a great system.

Wait 3 days and come back to the office to pick up the authorization. Not back yet. They promise it will be in tomorrow. Go in the next day and they are closed for lunch. I give up. Thankfully, I was able to hand that task over to Carter and he went into the office later in the afternoon, picked up the paperwork and scheduled the appointment. For the 4th of July. It’s a regular work day here.

Since Josh had the day off, he went with us to see the plastic surgeon. Just what he wanted to do on his vacation day (the base has a holiday, but the rest of the country has work as normal — well, as normal as it gets during Ramadan). The plastic surgeon looked at it for about 30 seconds and said it was easy to remove, but in order to do the very best job possible, he needed more information. He said they would need to do an MRI in order to know whether to approach it from inside the mouth or externally. Oh, please, won’t someone get me a Swiss Army knife and just let me hack it out myself? I can’t take it anymore.

Make an appointment for an MRI the next day. Pledge eternal gratefulness to the pediatrician for including an approval for imaging in her referral so I didn’t have to go back to our insurance again. Wait forever at the hospital (since it’s still Ramadan and everyone is running in slow motion). They do the MRI and a sonogram. Carter did fine and said it was just loud and hard to hold completely still for 45 minutes. Now we’ve been waiting for the plastic surgeon to call and schedule the appointment to finally have this thing removed, but it’s Eid. Yay for Ramadan being over, but no one works over Eid.

We have 2 weeks to get this done before we fly or I’ll be blogging all about my surgical attempt with a sharp stick, guided by YouTube.

The last several days have been a flurry of sorting, decluttering, packing, clearing, tossing, giving away, purging and sneezing as the dust has been flying. In my zeal to streamline, I may have accidentally given away Josh’s jeans and belt that he loved because they were sitting too close to a pile of clothes that he was giving away. Oops, sorry love. You can buy new ones.

I’m turning into a screeching harpie because I sort through stuff and then the kids keep trying to “save” things from the trash bags stacked by the front door: I love this (grungy) stuffed bunny, Mom! He’s my favorite!
Then why did I find him under the dresser covered in cobwebs and hanging with the missing marker caps and change? Hmmm, I highly doubt he’s your favorite. I’m not even sure if he belongs to us or was left behind by one of the kids who comes to bible study.

The war is on. If I don’t love it, it’s not coming with us. If it’s replaceable, it’s gone. And at the end, when I’m on the other side, receiving and opening boxes I will still say, “How did this ever make the cut?!?“

I”m off to tackle the bathroom. No Shampoo Left Behind? No, more like Every Prescription for Itself!

We have two weeks until the movers come and I’m already planning our next vacation. One of the things I love most about living overseas is having all these different countries and cultures accessible via only a short(ish) plane flight away. Ironically, I hate our travel days and the 48 hours leading up to a trip is just one big mental battle where my brain tries to convince me how much nicer it would be to stay home as I go about packing and making final preparations. But once we’re on the ground, it’s always worth it as we get to see things in person that we’ve only read about before in books, experience history in person, and get to show our kids the world.

As I was going back through my blog posts I realized I had drafted a bunch of posts about our Christmas trip to Budapest/Germany that I never got around to writing. It’s now or never since in 3 weeks I plan to be focused on Move to the Middle East 4.0 and if I don’t nail down the details now, they will fade under a layer of Abu Dhabi sand.

If you asked me to rank all of our vacations I would probably put Budapest near the bottom of the list (not that there is a bottom — all of our trips have been excellent, but it didn’t rank above Poland or Germany). Looking back at my photos and seeing what a beautiful city it is and all the amazing things we did, I’m not sure why. I think partly because I had decreased my medication so my mood was a bit off and partly because it was a winter trip whereas Poland/Germany were both in the summer and I actually preferred our biking/hiking in Germany to skiing — though the kids would say that was heresy. Let’s just chalk it up to an SSRI deficit because 6 months later, Budapest is looking pretty good.

We woke up in our lovely Air BnB apartment, Josh made the kids breakfast, and then the 2 of us popped down the street for cappuccinos at the neighborhood coffee house so we could have 30 minutes to ourselves without chattering kids in our ears. It was a Paris meets California kind of place with drink names like Karma Cappuccino and Zen pastries, a naked wood counter and standing room for 3 people. Blissfully quiet.

After our grown up Time Out, we stopped back at the apartment, picked up the kids and prepared to walk. If you talked to the kids, you would think our vacations were death marches all over Europe  . . in their defense, we did walk a lot on this trip.

then hike up up up to the citadel and the statue

Because of the hot springs and the rock formations, the hill side of the city (Buda) contains a network of caves. This cave church used to be a monastery, but today is a museum. With the audioguide it was a bit like going to church with a sermon and everything. It was a lot bigger than we expected, with one cave room leading into another and several different chapels, but it was too dark inside to capture much more than the main room.

Then walk back UP to the Fisherman’s Bastion which is an elevated terrace on the side of the hill next to the castle and a great spot for viewing the city.