Wichita - the good, the bad, the ugly

We have friends who live in Wichita currently, and we've been meaning to visit them for awhile now. One of their two kids is about to undergo surgery for a congenital heart defect, so we thought now would be a good time to show our support. We left Thursday morning, with a little trepidation regarding how Quinn was going to handle his first plane trip, including a change at one of the largest airports in the world at O'Hare.

Quinn was a star on the plane ride. We fed him one meal on the first leg and together with some nursing, his ears were fine and the time passed amicably. At O'Hare he was completely fascinated with all the goings on of a busy airport. All the planes, buses, trucks, baggage cars and people had him completely mesmerized and he spent the whole time pointing and grunting at things of interest.

Bec managed to find a little corridor to an emergency exit that was quiet enough to get him to sleep and he napped for much of the time. Which was good since our scheduled two hour layover was to become three and a half due to one of the infamous O'Hare delays. Fortunately though, we checked the board often, first to detect the delay and a gate change, then to detect reversion to the original schedule and yet another gate change. Eventually, we got on our plane, reasonably on time. Another feeding on the plane and suddenly we were there, and after the couple of minor hiccups really the whole thing went quite well. Once again, Quinn proves to be an able adventurer!

We mostly laid low the first day. Our hosts had a couple medical appointments in anticipation of the surgery, and we were able to look after their other daughter who is a really nice, sweet, good smart little girl. Quinn loved to follow her around, which I think got a little tiresome for her by the end of the trip, but not this day.

That night (Friday) I came down with the stomach flu. Really violently. Outside of one food poisoning, it's the sickest I can ever remember being. Every half hour, both ends, for 6 hours through the night. I was terrified I was going to give it to their daughter having the surgery, and I was terrified I wasn't going to be in shape to fly home. In part to quarantine myself and in part to try to speed my recovery, I stayed in bed the whole next day and into Sunday - not that that was difficult because all I wanted to do was sleep, which I did for 33 hours of a 40 hour period (including the time actually being sick).

On Sunday I finally emerged, shellshocked. My relationship with food was still somewhat adversarial, but at least I was recovering. We spent some time in the backyard, and Quinn loved the chance to play outside for the first time. Quinn walked a mile in their backyard.

That night Bec caught the flu. The hubbub eventually woke Quinn. And then just when he'd begin to settle she'd have to go again. Quinn, of course, was puzzled as to why mommy would have to bolt from the bed to the ensuite bathroom at intervals, followed by these inhuman sounds. He cried and cried. Showing him mommy helped some, but made it worse some too. Singing didn't calm him, which is somewhat unusual. Bec reciting stories helped, but I can't remember the words to anything and Bec was too incapacitated to do this for any lenght of time. I began reading a Dr Suess compendium. It includes a Bartholomew Cubbins story that's really well past Quinn's age level, plus not in the usual Suessian rhythm and rhyme, but he was totally galvanized by it. I read 243 pages of Dr Suess that night. Nobody got much sleep, but we got through the night.

At some point that night, Quinn also puked a big puddle in the bed. Uh oh we thought - here we go. But it was a one-off event and after a bed change that was the end of it for him. Unfortunately though, puking noises became apparent from elsewhere in the house during the night - two of our hosts had caught it, including their youngest who was due for surgery. I was mortified that we had some all this way to show our support and instead we got their daughter sick, but in the end it turned out to be no serious impact. At least none that they'd let on to - hopefully it's true.

Bec wasn't in shape to fly so we had to postpone our flight back a day. It turns out that due to some sort of error they had cancelled Bec's return ticket, but fortunately we were able to straighten that out. We spent an additional day recuperating. That last day, the other two of our four hosts caught the flu, meaning it went clear through all 7 of is in 5 days flat. Highly contagious would you say? The next day, Tuesday, our flight went completely smoothly, blessedly. I was sooooo glad to see home again - at times I had felt like I was on Apollo 13 on the other side of the moon, wondering whether I'd ever get back...

One of our primary motivations in going down was to show our support for our friends in their difficult time, and I suppose there was a little symbolism in getting through this flu menace together. Flying 2000 miles to get a close-up view of my friends' toilet for 6 days I'm afraid isn't going to rank up there in vacation memories for me, but there are more important things in life. We made it through together and we will continue to make it through whatever comes, together.