In my defense, I couldn't get access to the blog while in China. However, the Tyler and I have been (quite unexpectedly) back in the states for...about a month now. And I have not updated. Because I am a slacker.
The totally stable face of a slacker. No crazy eyes there or anything.
Our plans were thrown into chaos after we had been in China for about three weeks. We were going about our teaching as usual (Tyler's students loved him. Like, LOVED. As in, would beg to sit with us at lunch so they could talk with him more) and nothing had happened beyond the usual and expected travel illnesses. I got food poisoning at the end of our second week, Tyler got it in about the third week, then it went away.
Or so we thought.
Then some pain started. First in his shoulder. Then his ankle. It got so bad he couldn't make the forty-minute walk in to school. We headed to the doctor across the street from campus after class to see if she could give us some crutches and, like a good doctor, she took his temperature.
And promptly sent us to the emergency room.
After several hours and many unnecessary tests, we ended up in a hallway. Tyler was sleeping on a gurney with an IV in him and I was in a chair by the foot of his bed squishing the roaches that wandered too near him from their nest in the wall. Three wonderful people from the school we worked at (two teachers and a student) stayed with us the whole night, waiting for news and making sure we weren't alone.
The next day we were moved to the very nice and longer-stay portion of the hospital (we found out later we were in essentially the party leaders' hospital. And we got our own room!). Tyler was seen by several doctors each day and always had between three and five bags of IV fluid put in him. The pain had shifted to his knees and wrist along with the ankle and shoulder and he was running high fevers nightly. He couldn't move much, so we spent most of our time trying to entertain ourselves and desperately trying to understand the Chinese soap operas on tv. I think one character has a disease that keeps her crying at all times. I never saw her dry-eyed.
We were informed it is actually a Korean show, but it was on Chinese television.
We lived at that hospital for almost two weeks. The doctors would tell me that they were testing for increasingly more terrifying diseases. We called our parents. A lot. We went from fear of bacterial meningitis to tuberculosis to bone cancer to yellow fever and no tests came back with any answers. We were losing it.
We finally got an unofficial diagnosis: reactive arthritis. Turns out, Tyler's body really does not like any sort of strange bacteria and will attack his joints when they find one. He has now had arthritis for about a month. Some days are better than others. Some days he needs his dad to pretty much carry him up and down stairs, most nights he can't sleep from the pain, and days are generally spent on the couch, the chair, and the bed. If he is feeling good and very ambitious he tries to take the dog on a walk, but generally it lasts about ten minutes.
O yeah. And we now have a dog. Our baby. Her name is Layla and she is a beautiful little German Shepherd. She is also trouble, but with us as parents, that's not so shocking.
Behold, the cutest dog in the world.
Anyway, we made it back to the states and are currently living with Tyler's parents in Colorado. I am studying for the LSAT and Tyler is doing his utmost to train the puppy and keep on top of his pain. Hopefully it fades soon. I really, really hope so.
In the meantime, we have no choice but to have a sense of humor about the whole thing, as much as that is possible. Tyler has decided not to swear in front of the puppy (she's just a baby), so his go-to expletive is "SWEET MOTHER OF FLUFFY". Thanks for that, Kirsten.
Love you guys and sorry I was out of the loop so long. I will try to keep this updated. You are all fabulous.
Talk to you soon.
