PANIC!

I wonder if someone could have a heart attack from sheer panic.  It's Monday, my flight is scheduled for Friday, and I (in all likelihood) will not be on it.

I opened my email this morning to a message from the British Consulate.  Hoping that this was good news and that I would soon have my passport and visa ready to go for Friday, I read the message expectantly- only to have all my hopes and dreams come crashing down in splinters around my ankles.  "Congratulations!" it said. "Your visa is currently being processed and should be finished within 5-15[!] business days.  This estimate does not include shipment time."  I don't remember the next minute or so, except for a roaring in my ears followed by an overwhelming sense of shock and disappointment.  And panic.  Did I mention the panic?!  So I emailed both my department at King's College and my apartments to explain what was going on, to be advised what my next course of action should be, and to find out what the consequences (cringe!) might be if I failed to be there for enrollment and induction weeks.

Meanwhile, pneumonia week three continues, undaunted by the thousands of medications currently coursing through my veins.  On Friday, after ten days on one strong antibiotic and four days on another and distrusting the medical advice and competence of Brownwood Regional Medical Center (with good reason- a patient of my mother's friend recently died of a hemorage after being sent home TWICE and being told that the blood coming up out of his mouth must be a bitten cheek!) I went to Shannon Medical Center in San Angelo.  After four hours in the exam room, an x-ray, and a CAT scan, it was decided that I have a slow-growing pneumonia that's just going to take its own sweet time in going away.

I did my very best to make those poor nurses work for their money.  After searching my inner elbows in vain for a usable vein, the nurse took blood through the back of my hand, but the radiology technicians demanded that an IV be inserted in a certain vein and only in my inner elbow, so then I had two more nurses on either side of me, thumping and pressing at my arms, competing to find that elusive vein.  When the nurse on my right side finally got it, he was so surprised that he let it go, and it sprayed blood all over himself, me, and the hospital bed.  Fun and eventful day, I would say!

Then, after a round of IV antibiotics and steroids, I was sent home and told to have a new x-ray in a month in London to make sure the pneumonia was clearing up.  In total, I've had three sets of antibiotic pills, two injected antibiotics, an IV antibiotic, three forms of steroid, albuterol, and hydrocodone.  As I think about it, maybe all these drugs are a positive thing.  After all the antibiotics I've had, my body could probably kill all the London bacteria in a five mile radius- like a superpower.  And I have enough steroids in my system to supply a major-league baseball team for an entire season, so I should be all beefed-up and ready for all that walking I'm going to be doing.

In better news, I quickly received a reply from the Classics department at King's College that set my mind at ease again.  They apologized for the inconvenience I was having, and assured me that, should I miss any part of enrollment or induction, the department would be happy to accommodate me in an individual meeting and induction at the Classics office upon my arrival.  Thank God!  Cheers, KCL!