My First Belgian ER Trip

You all know my family moved to Brussels 8 weeks ago. We were not informed that we'd be in a hotel for more than a week until about 12 hours before the movers came and packed everything out, giving us little to no time to rearrange our stuff.

We moved in a smelly, gross hotel with the tiniest kitchenette I've ever seen (It has one functioning burner) and none of the restaurants are open for dinner because they only cater to the business lunch crowds. This has meant some serious challenges in trying to feed the family, as there is also only a teeny-tiny grocery store nearby and the prices are quite high.

This has been really stressful for me, apparently, and I've developed a heart condition thanks to all of it.

We finally move into our home on Thursday, but we won't have our household stuff, including sheets and towels, until Friday.

This heart condition is likely a part of me for the rest of my life. My mother developed a similar problem at the exact same age during a high-stress summer. She was on heart meds for the rest of her life and eventually died of heart failure at the ripe ol' age of 55.

I'm freakin' scared that the family decision we made has ruined my heart and will forever taint the wonderful experiences I have been having and will continue to have here in Brussels.

My sensitive 8 year old was so upset by my trip to the ER on Saturday that her stomach is all messed up and she's had to stay home to be near the bathroom today. The other girls are scared, too.

For those of you in the medical field, it's a persistent PVC with pretty low voltage. The PVC's are occurring at a rate of 8-20 times a minutes so it's pretty bad. All my minerals and other labs came back perfect so there is no medical reason for this to have happened.

Until I meet with the cardiologist next week, I have been told to be as sedate as possible (ha! we're MOVING again this week and it's a 20 minute walk from the metro to my kid's school, each way, twice a day until that move happens). The doctor at the hospital has put me on the European version of the same exact medication my mother was one. According to my father, she didn't have PVC but she would develop a very hard, fast heart rate. I am on the lowest dose possible and it seems to help, but is wearing off too soon. So I sleep great, wake up and have about 2-3 hours where I still feel good, and then my heart feels all wrong again for the rest of the day. The cardiologist is highly respected by the medical staff here at the Embassy so I am hoping he is as good as they say. I was sent to a specific hospital by the embassy health unit and it happens to be the nearest local hospital. I was worried that I was bankrupting us but my heart was beating so badly that I felt I didn't have any choice. I found out just why so many people love socialized health care! For the entire 3-4 hours visit, including being seen by multiple doctors, getting an x-ray, 5 vials of blood, and continuous monitoring, the out-of-pocket cost for us was under 300 Euros. In the US, that would have run well over 10 times that amount. I will not hesitate to go to the ER again!

But that said, as I sit here feeling my heart do flip-flops around itself, i'm frustrated and scared. This wasn't supposed to happen. I'm the healthy one in the family. I'm only 10 pounds overweight, my blood work is always perfect and other than infertility-causing autoimmune weirdness, I've always been pretty darn healthy. So a heart condition that makes it so I can barely stand on a metro, or walk down the street, is painful.

What I Mean by Clear Bathroom Doors

As promised, I'm including some photos of the bathrooms doors that I mentioned in my last post.

 In this first picture, the bathroom door is closed. There is a reflective coating on the glass that allows you to see the bed. I am standing at the foot of the bed, for reference' sake. Please note that you can
A) see the toilet
B) see the bathroom counter
C) see EVERYTHING in there

If I turn out the light inside the bathroom, it's harder to see through but still possible. The other bathroom is in the middle of the hallway, which is even worse. We're admittedly grateful that this bathroom is around the corner from where the kids are!

The kitchenette is quite small. Although there are 2 burners in that space, it only has space for one pot unless both are tiny. We're a family of 5, so tiny pots don't work. The movers forgot to pack one drawer of spices but that's ended up being a pleasant thing because those spices have already been put to use with several of our meals. Below the stovetop is the adequately sized dishwasher. In the cupboard above the stove is a microwave and then above that, the two pots and skillet the hotel has for our use. Below the spices is the fridge. . . on the other side, garbage and a handbroom is below the sink. The sink is tinier than the stove and set up so that if you try to wash a dish, it knocks the faucet and turns the water off, which is frustrating. Above the sink in the first cupboard is the dish supply (there are more wine glasses than dishes in that thing) and above that is a bunch of coffee equipment because apparently, the giant coffee maker on the counter isn't enough! The middle top cupboard is where we're keeping cereal and rice.

We're making it work, mostly because we don't have much choice, and trying to laugh through the chaos. It will be another 2 weeks before we hear if the gov't has signed a lease for a home for us and after that there will still be a delay before we can move in. I am hoping that delay is as short as possible.

Touring the City without a Phone

Since I last posted, my husband and I have given up on another pregnancy. We did several more medicated rounds, but with the stress of the death of my beloved mother-in-law and then returning to teaching, we couldn't keep it up any more.
If my spouse asked to give it another shot, I absolutely would, but I'm more or less at peace with our decision to be done.
It's strange though, because I'd always wanted four children and even now when I could kids or sometimes when I've set the table, I start to count out 6, rather than the 5 of us that there are. It's not upsetting, but there's a small piece of my family that will always be missing.
Either days ago I stepped off an airplane in foreign country, something I haven't done since I was 14 years old. That country was an English speaking one, so although the accent was fun, I knew what was being said around me and how to communicate with waiters, sales clerks, etc.
But here in Brussels?
Nope.
I have always tried to help those around me who couldn't speak English and am so grateful now to be having the experience where I am now the oddball. My children have been begging me to let them get ice scream and waffles (yes, it's a thing here) but I'm legitimately scared of trying to order such a thing from a street vendor.
We are in temporary living quarters for the next 2 months. Our location is pretty fantastic but the accommodations are pretty awful. It could be worse, don't get me wrong, but it's pretty bad. I'll post pictures when I get a chance, but imagine this: You're in a two room suit. One suit has a king sized bed with a gigantic picture of a woman with hair in her face over the bed. The picture takes up the entire wall. The bathroom has a near constant smell of fart or leftover fecal matter and there's no fan to clear it out. The shower stall is clear as is the door between the bedroom and the bathroom. Yes, CLEAR. As in, you can see right through it so nobody can go to the toilet in privacy. There is less than three feet between the toilet and the king sized bed . . .The second suit is similarly designed, although it has a decent sized tub in addition to the stinky shower. There's a tiny kitchenette and by tiny, I mean that although there are two burners, you can only use one at a time because you cannot fit two pots on there simultaneously.
Because we have a kitchenette, we do not qualify for the meal reimbursement we expected to get and really wish we had available to us. We're sinking about 100 euros a day into food because there isn't a decent grocery story nearby and nothing within walking distance is open for dinner. We could live off sandwiches from the local mini-mart style things on all the street corners, but each sandwich runs about $4 each and there are 5 of us and . . . sandwiches get really boring, really fast.
We've only been here 8 days and I'm already annoyed by the struggle to feed the kids 3 times a day. Dash had cereal for dinner last night. I've been a parent for 12 years and this was the first time I'd ever said anyone was eating cereal for dinner.  There are plenty of places to stop and grab lunch but the only places open for dinner are those that cater to city-living, meaning, hangout on  a patio and drink for a couple of hours. They are not kid-friendly at all.
We've spent hours upon hours on our feet, walking around the city, hopping on public transit, and walking some more. I'm getting to know the Metro here pretty well and will get better about the trains and trams as well with some practice.
Today I navigated several square miles without a working phone. Oh, did I not mention my phone problems yet?
Yes, we've been here 8 days but our phones were cut off on day 2, so I've been without cell service or data all week. This means I've been using old school maps to get from point A to point B. My kids gave me an A- for our adventures earlier this morning and an A+ for later in the morning. The minus is because I walked down one street too far at one point, but this actually allowed me to get some cash out of an ATM and let us walk down a busier street, which also felt safer. . . so maybe I deserve an A for overall navigation. Yes??
I'm heading over to the Embassy again later today with the hope that I can meet with the cell provider that will be there. A week without service (oh yeah, I signed up for service last week, so it SHOULD have been working 6 days ago) is rather ridiculous.