Not What We Signed On For!

One of the things we dread as fulltimers being from out of the country is illness. As you know Gordon hasn't been feeling well for the last couple of weeks and last night his temperature was up and he had chills so we decided to go to Emergency. We spent almost four hours waiting in the waiting room in chairs not designed for people who are ill. He finally got a bed in Emergency about 10:30 p.m. where after blood work, a chest x-ray and a CT scan of the chest he was diagnosed with pneumonia of unknown origin. We arrived home around 4:00 a.m.

When we went to the walk in clinic last week he was given antibiotics which apparently should have cleared up pneumonia but it did not and he kept getting worse. They gave him three heavy doses of an inhaler last night in the hospital and prescribed an inhaler for him as well as another round of antibiotics of a different type. They also did blood work to determine if he might have Valley Fever. This test takes about a week to come back. If he does have Valley Fever, antibiotics will not help and he will have to go on an antifungal drug but they won't give him the antifungal drug until the diagnosis is positive. So here we are in Tucson waiting for the results and for him to recover sufficiently to drive back home.

If he has not recovered sufficiently as determined by the doctor to make the long drive (about 2500 miles) to Ontario, our travel medical insurance will look after returning the RV to our home province. We're cutting our time really short to be able to get back especially if he doesn't recover quickly.

I have been asked why I don't drive the rig. I have a couple of answers to that. One, I'm not that comfortable driving the truck having always been used to driving a Saturn sport coupe and two, I don't need the stress with the health problems that I have personally.

When we began this lifestyle we had decided that if we started having health problems we would discontinue our life on wheels and return to the stix and brix house. Is this the time? At this point we're keeping our options open.

We had booked an appointment with the RV Doctor (mobile RV repair) to come today as our kitchen slide has been very noisy when going in and out for the last few months. He fixed that in short order and also showed us how to raise the top of the stove. It's so easy when you know how! I've also had a problem with the stove top cover not sitting back far enough so that when you have pots on the back burners they get pushed ahead which makes for ineffective cooking so he hooked up a little hook thing to keep the top in the upright position. Again so easy! He also looked at our bathroom fan motor and said that if we go and buy it, he'll come and install it and make the necessary adaptations so it will fit so it's another trip to Camping World tomorrow!

Other than feeling exhausted today from getting about 4 hours of sleep, we're relieved first of all to have a diagnosis for Gordon and second of all to have the RV problems fixed.


Thanks to all of you who have expressed concern and inquired about Gordon's health. We really appreciate it!