Expatriotical

Episode 10: Hospitalizations- Chandra Edition

• Chandra Alley • Season 1 • Episode 10

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EMERGENCY!!! In this episode, Chandra shares the intimate details of her first visit to an emergency room (ever) in the middle of the Italian Covid lockdown of 2020 and reveals her thoughts and everything that took place after she suffered a stroke, only 4 weeks following that emergency room visit.

Then stay tuned as she shares about one of her favorite makers in this episode's "Chan Select".  People this episode is like an emotional roller coaster, so hang on, it's going to be quite a ride!

Like what you hear? Text and tell me!

"Live and Travel in the Know" with Expatriotical!

Expatriotical- Episode 10: Hospitalizations- Chandra Edition

 

Bienvenue, Benvenuti, and Welcome to Expatriotical, the podcast for expats, travelers, and other adventurous souls. I’m Chandra Alley and after living as an expat with my husband and 4 children in two different countries for almost 6 years, I’ve learned the arts of pivoting during pitfalls, travelling tastefully for less, and soaking in amazing new cultures without loosing your own.

 

Join me, as we dive into the joys and challenges of travel and the expat life in every episode!

 

Good morning everyone or afternoon or night! Whatever time it may be where you are listening! Here in Paris, it is a partially sunny, partially rainy spring and it is beautiful! It makes me happy to see the leaves really budding out on the trees and spring really coming into full bloom. The song I Love Paris which opens with “I love Paris in the springtime”. I almost sang there, but chose not to, really does hit the nail on the head, by starting with what is probably the best season here! That’s my opinion of course.

 

Anyway, it ironically puts me in a good head space, seeing all of this gorgeous sunshine to share about a pretty rough time for me during our first assignment as expats.

 

I’m not going to go into great detail about the Covid-19 lockdown, but most people do know that the country of Italy was the first non-Asian country to really be hit with Covid, and the Italian government responded in force, by shutting down schools first, then the workplace, and subsequently overnight I became a homeschooling mom, while also watching my two children who were not in school, cooking, cleaning, being a nurse, and it was a lot. And I’ll probably do an episode at a later time about that whole adventure.

 

But for this episode, it’s good to know that the hospitalizations I’m going to mention came during the Italian Covid lockdown of 2020.

 

It was the morning as March 11th or 12th, probably the 12th, and probably one of the last days that we were allowed to go outside of our small communities to get groceries essentials. I went to a market that was only about ten minutes away, called Esselunga, because at the time it was the only market that carried Starbucks coffee, and I needed to get a few other things. So I had also texted my friend Jena, who was also my neighbor, to see if she needed anything and to pick up a few items for her.

 

I went to the store, while Chris stayed the kids, as he had just had to start working from home, and was able to keep an eye on the kids while I made this quick trip. When I got home I took all the groceries and went in and parked the car, and took the two bags that I had got for Jena to her house. We chit chatted for just a couple of seconds, because she was also now a homeschooling mom, cook, nurse, etc. And just wanting to see how things were going for her. And she was also printing things for my kids at that time, because I didn’t have a printer yet.

 

Anyway, when I turned to leave I took a couple of steps backwards and I didn’t realize that I was on the edge of a sidewalk. So when I took a twisting step to turnaround my ankle buckled and I fell and hit my knee on a metal grate that was covering some plumbing.

 

She, of course, immediately gasped and asked if I was ok and as I got up I saw that my jeans had ripped and when I looked inside of the hole in my jeans, I saw that my knee was deeply cut and bleeding profusely.

 

At this point I may have been in a little bit of shock, because the order of things aren’t clear, but I realized I was probably going to need to go to the hospital, and Jena asked how she could help. And I said I was going to go home and tell Chris and then I would text her from there.

 

So I hobbled back to the house, and when I got in I called Chris and told him to come here. Our house in Italy was a three-story attached, as the British would say, townhouse. So he came downstairs and was like, “Oh man, Babe, what happened?” As I explained how I had fallen he helped me to clean up the blood a bit and apply pressure to the would, but we knew that I had to go to the emergency room to get my knee sewn back together.

 

So I texted Jena and she came over, while her husband stayed with their kids, and she watched my kids so Chris could drive me to the emergency room which was only about seven minutes away.

 

We arrived and parked, and then went to the triage tents which were set up outside of the hospital and I explained that I wasn’t there because I felt like I was sick with Covid, but because I have fallen and cut my knee. We went inside and after I checked in, I waited for a brief time in the waiting room, and then I was sent back to a different area to wait. As I walked down the halls of the hospital, I saw sick people lying on gurneys waiting to be taken into a room, which the rooms were already full and I saw through a glass window a room full of about eight hospital beds with elderly people lying on them and nurses and doctors wearing full white hazmat suits moving around actively caring for their patients.

 

Chris and I got to the second waiting room, and I don’t think we had to wait very long before we were called back by a tall doctor, probably his 40s, who spoke English very well. I explained what happened, and he said that he would give me some local anesthetic injections in my knee, clean everything up, and stitch my back together. I wouldn’t be able to get the wound wet for 15 days, if I remember correctly, and then I would need to have the stitches removed.

 

The doctor and his nurse assistant got straight to work, and if I’m honest I know I had to turn away for part where he sewed things back up. I thankfully couldn’t feel any pain once he numbed everything, but even thought of watching him sew me up then, still makes me a bit sick to my stomach now. Which is interesting, because looking at the wound itself didn’t bother me, it was watching it been fixed that did. I know, I’m strange!

 

Anyway, the doctor made quick work of it, and before I knew it I was hobbling out of the hospital with my knee bandaged up headed back to the house. I remember there also being some glitches when I tried to get the stitches taken out, and Chris may actually have been the one to do that, due to having scheduling problems with the hospital. Oh wait, I remember what the scheduling problem was, it was to get my second round of a tetanus shot, because I had cut my knee open on metal. And was required to have two rounds of tetanus shots and I have to admit I didn’t get the second round.

 

So, needless to say, I was a bit incapacitated for the next few days, and even months afterword if I would hit the scar when I was trying to get seated at my dining room table, it was practically bring me to my knees with pain, no pun intended!

 

Fast forward just over four weeks after that trip to the emergency room, which by the way was my first trip ever to the emergency room, things had been stressful, and by that point we had been in lockdown for over seven weeks. On April 16th, I woke up just before 4 o’clock in the morning. I had been laying on my left side and went to rollover to my right, and as I did my right arm flailed out of control to the other side the bed. That quickly got my attention and woke me up further. I realized I couldn’t really use my arm, and more so when I touched my right arm with my left hand I couldn’t feel it. Meaning it was like touching somebody else’s right arm, with my left hand. My left hand could feel everything my right arm could feel nothing.

 

I proceeded to get up and go use the restroom, which was tricky for me because I am right-handed, and that wasn’t working at that time, and when got back into bed I started having an ophthalmic migraine. That was when that nagging suspicion that had been in the back of my head really hit me And I thought to myself, “I think I’m having a stroke.”

 

I woke Chris up and told him my suspicions and what I was feeling, and he said, “Well maybe you’re arm just fell asleep?” And I said, “No I don’t think that’s it, because I was sleeping on my left side, not my right side and my left side is fine.” I told him that I didn’t want to go to the hospital at 4:00 o’clock in the morning, I had just been there and didn’t want to enter that nightmare again, so I asked him if he could go get me some aspirin. Because that’s what I thought I had heard was appropriate to do, later I found out I probably shouldn’t have done that.

 

Anyway, I took some aspirin and started praying, begging God, “Please don’t let me die.” Chris, of course prayed for me too, and I did my best to try to go back to sleep. Praying myself, eventually, to sleep. I awoke around 6:30 and immediately began touching and trying to use my arm. Some feeling and movement was back. I would say I was at about 70% of my regular ability or use. I awkwardly dressed myself and started getting the kids ready. But I didn’t trust myself to carry Caleb, who was then not quite a year and a half old, down the stairs with my right arm, so I put him in my left arm and used the wall on my right to steady myself, because the banister was on the side which was holding Caleb.

 

Chris had to cook breakfast, which is something he had either already started or this was the initiation of him cooking breakfast for us all during the week for the next couple of years.

 

I got the kids situated and Lilliah started with her school work, but shortly into it she needed help. In my memory now she needed help with a math problem, but maybe it was for spelling or something like that, either way it was something that I had been doing for at least 30 years, and as my brain sent the signal to my hand to write out the simple formula or word, electric synapses made their way from my brain down my nerves into my hand, and when they got there my hand protested violently. And what came forth from that pencil, looked nothing like what I was trying to write. And that’s when I felt sure, that I had experienced a stroke a few hours earlier.

 

So I reached out to my Bible study group, explained the situation, and asked for prayer. My dear friend Joni said she knew of a neurologist in the city center of Milan and gave me his number. I contacted him and he said he could get me in, in the afternoon. The problem was, Chris needed to stay home to be with the kids, and I was afraid to drive. Because I thought, “What if I have another stroke while driving? I could wreck the car and kill someone.” So I reached out again asking if anyone could take me to this appointment. And once again, Joni said, “I’ll take you, no problem.”

 

But there was a problem, because she was taking a big risk. At that time it was illegal to leave your house for any reason other than going to buy food, or something deemed essential by the Italian government. There were police patrolling constantly, in town where Joni lived, announcing over the loudspeakers of their cars saying in Italian, “Stay inside, stay safe, do not come outside.” So if we were stopped, and the police did not have compassion or believe what I told them, then Joni could get a €3500 fine. And she knew that very well, but this former soldier of the U.S. Army, had no fear, and for that, I am forever grateful to her!

 

That afternoon she took me to my appointment, this neurologist was actually not specialized in strokes, but he performed an assessment and at the time believed that I had probably had a migraine with an aura. I, of course, had told him that I did have a history of having ophthalmic migraines, which for those that are not aware, create a visual disturbance. And for me that starts as a small area of gray outlined by a colorful squiggly line, sort of like you used to see on an old school television set when it was staticky, and that area which would start in usually a strange shape and would grow larger and anything inside of that strange squiggly shaped, I could not see. So that was a big problem the one time I got one while I was driving. Thankfully they usually didn’t last long and sometimes I didn’t even have accompanying pain, but always felt strange afterward.

 

The doctor said that even though he thought it was a migraine I did still need to rule out a stroke, so he wrote me the prescription to get an EKG of my heart, and an MRI of my brain. And then he said after I got the results from both of those, I should email them to him to follow up, and we would see what we needed to do.

 

I went to the Milan Medical Center, which I had visited often during the last two months of my pregnancy with Caleb and had an EKG done, And all went well. Then a few days later I was able to go to an imaging center that I’ve never been to, and get an MRI. Which was an experience that I don’t wish on anyone. Not that the employees were bad, they were great, the facility was clean and modern, but for somebody who isn’t even claustrophobic, lying in small tube for 30 minutes with your head strapped down and not being able to move a muscle, was a bit much.

 

The results of this test however, where not good. They showed that I had had an ischemic stroke in the left hemisphere of my brain. If you’ve ever felt a sense of relief and dread hit you at the same time, you can imagine how I felt. Relief because, “I knew it. I’m not crazy, I really did have a stroke.” And dread because, “Oh my goodness. I’m only 36-years-old. How could this happen and what if it happens again?!”

 

I sent all of my results to the neurologist, and he said okay, “Since you don’t smoke, aren’t on birth-control, and a bunch of other factors that can lead to stroke, and because you’re quite young, you need to have another type of EKG. Because I think that you could have a Patent Forum Ovale or PFO.”

 

For those, like me, who have or for me at the time had never heard of a PFO. It’s pretty much a hole in your heart, that everyone has, but for most people when you are born and take your first breath, the hole closes. But for about one third of people, it remains. And you don’t really know about it unless you have and event like a stroke, or something else.

 

So I went back to the Milan Medical Center and got a bubble contrast echocardiogram, which basically is where a saline solution filled with tiny bubbles is injected into your veins and the doctor uses it during the EKG or ultrasound of the heart, to see the blood flow of the heart. Basically, the doctor would inject the solution and tell me to take a deep breath and hold it, then pretend like I was going to blow it out but not actually do it. (To better described it, it’s kind of like what you do to equalize your ears when you’re on an airplane.) The doctor said, that if we saw a burst of light on the EKG that would mean that there was a hole. And sure enough, there was a hole.

 

So now what? This doctor, who was a cardiologist, then referred me to Dr. Alfonso Ielasi, an Interventional Cardiologist, who would be able to repair the hole in my heart. And so for the next few months, I spoke with my insurance company, Dr. Ielasi, a vascular neurologist- which was the type of neurologist I needed to see for a stroke, and a lovely staff member at Ospedale San Donato, trying to coordinate all of the details of scheduling the procedure, paying for the procedure, and everything in between.

 

Mind you, all of this is still happening during Covid. And due to me needing this procedure, and the travel restrictions for going in and out of Italy, we were not going to be able to go to America that summer, so at the end of July, I went in on Thursday and had my first ever PCR Covid test, which hurt like the dickens because the swab of the test probably had some brain cells on it when the nurse pulled it out, and once that came back negative, I was cleared to have the procedure the following morning.

 

I’m sure I slept fine that night, though I missed my family. The following morning was pretty much waking up and being wheeled to the operating room. Well actually, there was an OR waiting room, where I chatted with the nurse on duty as she prepped my IV port and that sort of thing. Even though I could speak Italian pretty well at that point, she spoke English very well and she could see that I was nervous and her kind words and gentle way really comforted me.

 

I felt silly being nervous, I knew that they weren’t opening up my chest performing surgery, they were doing a simple laparoscopic procedure and going in through an artery my leg.  Placing a little tiny device that looked like a closed umbrella through the hole in my heart, opening it, and finally pulling it back over the hole to seal it. Simple, but still scary.

 

Once again I had brief thoughts of  “What if I die?” I didn’t want to die, even if life was really hard at the time, with Covid and coming out of the lockdown, and all of these medical issues, I wanted to live, to see my children grow up.

 

So these were the thoughts that assailed me and that I was praying against trying to give over to God and trust that He was working all things for my good as I was wheeled into the operating room. There was a whole team of doctors and medical personnel in the OR and once Dr. Ielasi, came in he quickly went over what would happen during the procedure and things began. Before they administered they anesthesia Dr. Ielasi, who must have sensed my fear, looked me in the eyes and said, “You’re going to be ok.” And shortly after, every went black.

 

I awoke to Dr. Ielasi talking to me. Once I was more coherent he said that everything had gone well. That they had actually discovered two holes in my heart, but the devise had been able to cover both holes.

 

All was well! I went back to the recovery/waiting room for a bit and then they took me to my room. I literally thanked God. Everything was ok and other than a sore throat, from the endoscopic ultrasound they had used during the procedure and the small incision they had made in my leg, I was no worse for wear, in fact I was technically better than new.

 

Chris and the kids were able to come pick me up that night and it felt so good to see them and to have them in my arms.

 

After a week, I was pretty much back to myself and we headed off on our Tour of Italy vacation, the one where Chris and the three older kids finally got to see the Vatican and the Coloseum, I carried a deliriously tired Caleb through the streets of Pompeii, and we had a delicious private dinner in the center of a palazzo with some dear friends in Sicily.

 

Life was good, but I would continue to have to visit Dr. Ielasi and the vascular neurologist, who even though I tried to get out of it, said I would need to take a small dose, currently 75 miligrams of aspirin, everyday for the rest of my life, just in case.

 

My time in Italy was beautiful, and also really really hard at times. So much so that I started writing a memoir, which is currently on pause, but trust me when I say that it was a lot. Much of which I haven’t even mentioned yet, the whole Covid story, and other issues we experienced, but I think it’s fair to say that if you have listened to Episode 4, where I talk about my children being hospitalized and now hearing my story, I think that you might agree that with all of that it was just a lot.

 

So I didn’t want to forget that God had gotten me through it all, spoiler alert, this is going to be our inspirational bit for the episode, but anyway, I wanted to have a memorial, or more accurately an Ebenezer stone, which comes from 1 Samuel 7:12 in the Bible, which says, “Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen, and called its name Ebenezer (which means stone of help), saying , ‘Thus far, the Lord has helped us.’”

 

At some point when I was researching the Ebenezer Stone I thought I ran across a translation that said, “The Lord has brought us through thus far.” And that is what stays in my mind. During those dark and scary times in Italy, God was with me.

 

So, after months of thought and prayer, on the 29th June, 2022- two days before we moved to Paris. I got my first and only tattoo. On the inside of my right wrist, the same arm, which was affected by the stroke, but which I can now say I have about 97% use of, I have a small boot of the country of Italy with a cross inside. Nothing flamboyant, just something to hopefully help me remember when times get tough, as they do in life, but sometimes especially when you are living abroad, that God is with me. He hasn’t left me. And he not only has brought me through thus far, but I believe He will continue to bring me through. And I’m so thankful for that!

 

Ok, like I said, it was a bit of a weighty episode this week, but I’m happy to report that here in Paris, at least when I wrote this, the sun was still shining, now it’s raining. And that’s ok! though there has definitely been spots of rain, but the sun in here again. Hallelujah!

 

Now for my “Chan Select” of the week! I’m going to bring your attention all the way back to Episode 2: Redefining “Trailing Spouse”, when I mentioned my friend Michelle. I told you that I had been having tea with her, and Isaiah and Caleb were also present, and most likely, it might not have just been having tea, as Michelle was patiently allowing me to sort through and pick out fabrics and patterns for the commission of a potential purse that I wanted her to make for me.

 

Michelle is the sole proprietor and amazing seamstress at the business WoolNeedleThread. She is the creator of artisan quality handmade purses, totes, project bags, and more that, as her website says, “bring the joy of beautiful color… and texture to every moment of your day.”

 

The thought, care, and detail that go into the design and craftsmanship of her work, are overwhelmingly apparent. Two of the first things I ever bought from Michelle were small zipper pouches that I have used to put my makeup in (one for travel one for normal use) and it may sound crazy, but seeing those brilliant colors and patterns when I grab those bags first thing in the morning, truly has brought a smile to my face so many times!

 

She has many products that are great for birthday gifts, gifts for crafters and makers, or with Mother’s Day 2024 just around the corner, you can give a gift of beautiful flowers, that won’t die in two weeks, but that can be used or worn for many years to come!

 

You can find all of her beautiful things at www.woolneedlethread.com. I’ll be sure to put the link in the show notes for this episode.

 

That’s it for this week, everybody! Thank you all so much for listening! As a reminder, please be sure to follow on whatever app or platform you listen with AND I would be super grateful if you would refer a friend, that you think might like or benefit from the content we have here at Expatriotical.

 

Thank you guys again so much! I’ll meet you back here again next week, but until then, this is Chandra Alley reminding you to “Live and Travel in the Know” with Expatriotical.