A Different Kind of Tour

 

Recently in Wales, we took TWO £200 tours. Luckily we've budgeted for this, so even though that's expensive (about $300 each), we were OK

Both were very enlightening.  The first one took us around to several castles and into the national park of the mountains of Snowdonia.  One of the castles, called Carnarvon, is where Prince Charles became the "Prince of Wales" a few years ago (now he's the King).  I'm pretty sure C.S. Lewis must have seen this castle and used it as inspiration for “Cair Paravel”, the legendary gathering place for Aslan (read “Jesus”) in his “Lion, Witch and Wardrobe” series.

We also found out that the town of Llandudno (in the Welsh language and pronounced something like “Clendendno or something) was one of the selected cities where thousands of English children were sent to be safe in WWII.  Again, right out of the C.S. Lewis series, although in his book, Lewis didn’t mention that it was only children of royal and very wealthy families who were moved here.  But I digress.

Now about that second 'tour'. About midnight the same night, having had a pretty ordinary meal, I got some unbelievable chest pains. Several antacids later, they weren't going away so we decided to head for an after-hours doctor.  If it was my eye or my foot, I would have gutted it through, but you only have one heart, and with heart disease in my family, I thought I better be sure.

 

The hotel night clerk either has no language, no personality, or both, but we had to practically act out “heart attack” and “doctor.”  Both resulted in a shake of the head.  Long story short and many more antics later, Tony got connected to an ambulance, even though I thought I didn't merit that much drama.  

He passed the phone to me, and I explained my problem.  She said she would get right on it, and I could expect the ambulance to arrive in “6 to 7 hours”.  I thought she made a mistake but no, it would be 6 -7 hours.  

"Cancel it!" I shouted into the phone, the pain getting worse. There had to be a better way.  

By then the clerk had managed to communicate that the nearest hospital that might take us was about an hour away, so I played my last card and said, "Taxi"?

"Taxi", "coke" and a few others, we've learned, are pretty much universal words, so he picked up the phone and we were on our way in minutes.

The driver, rubbing his head and yawning, as if he'd been sleeping, set the meter, and off we went.  ONE HOUR later, after talking to the driver, who spoke little English, in an effort to keep him awake, we arrived at the hospital.  We groaned to see several people in the waiting room, along with a young boy who was being accompanied by two policemen, going in with us.  The boy’s face and lip were bleeding. They checked us right in and within minutes I had been electrocardiograph and had blood taken.  

"I like this place," I thought as we settled down in the waiting room.  There was a silent TV up on the wall playing with non-stop tributes to the Queen. After 4 hours, the human tableau began to get boring, so I started talking to my fellow wait-ers.  I learned more about Wales than I wanted to know, but more significantly, about people and their daily lives and hopes and fears.  I could expand, but you're probably already wondering if this blog post will continue forever.

The boy with the lip, according to his father, is a "Top Lad" and didn’t mean to irritate the other young man at the pub.  I didn't tell the father that the “top lad” had been crying before he arrived.  Later in the piece, the father came over and handed us some Welsh tea cakes and a bottle of water, saying rather shyly, "I don't really fancy these, please eat them." Tony was very thankful.

On the TWELFTH hour of our wait, I was finally called in to see the doctor.  It seems that EVERYTHING is fine and there is no need for treatment or follow-up.  The doctor called out as I left, "And don't eat weird food!"

I absolutely agree with him.  I won't eat any more food anymore just because it looks interesting.  I also promise you I will NEVER think I need an "emergency room" again.  

Oh, and the reason I'm calling this the “Second Tour” is that it was the best drive into Welsh Culture and life, socialized medicine, and the universal human experience, no matter where you are.

And the two taxis there and back cost exactly two hundred pounds.  The hospital was absolutely FREE.  

Life continues to be interesting.  We'll do our best to keep posting as we go!

For some reason during my 12-hour ER room wait, this verse kept coming to me. Probably no connection, but .....

"Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie - the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years." (John 5:2-5)

Marsha