Perspective

If you've been following along, you know that this hasn't been our best trip. We suffered through worse than usual food and screaming children on the flight over. Both our bags were lost by the airlines and so far only one has been recovered. (They keep taunting me by telling me it will be delivered the next day, but so far that just isn't the case.) The rental car had to be exchanged. Our family visits were cut a bit short because we had shopping to do to replace necessities that were in the bags.

But we were keeping it in perspective. Our plane hadn't been shot down. It didn't disappear into thin air. We weren't hospitalized (at least not yet! It was all good. Everything in the missing bag was replaceable - although I was (still am) a bit perturbed that 60% of the missing bag's contents consist of all new, never worn clothing that I bought special for this trip. Even the bag itself was purchased especially for this trip.

But I was dealing with it. I'd instructed the American Express Global Assist Team (those nice folks who try to track down your bag so you can enjoy yourself) to have the bag forwarded to Zurich because we were only going to be in Paris for a couple of days and maybe they'd be able to get it to Zurich by Thursday. (Given that I'm writing this on Thursday, I can tell you that wasn't the case even though you'd have thought they'd be able to since they were given the instructions on Sunday.) But the key is that I'd decided not to stress out about the bag any more. We were determined not to let British Airways spoil our trip.

Then within two hours of arriving in Paris, I was trying to get the desk clerk at our hotel to phone an ambulance. Mark was hemorrhaging. By the time the ambulance arrived some 30 minutes later, he was passing out when he tried to stand up. I can tell you that I forgot about the stupid bag. I forgot about my precious little cat. One focus and one focus only - getting him the help he needed. I'm not sure how I stayed calm and focused. Grace of God is my best guess. So much for not being hospitalized. Although I was ready to strangle the person who remarked on Sunday afternoon that "It couldn't get any worse". Yes, it could. It did.

On the plus side, I'm so glad this happened in Paris and not in the countryside (English, French or US) or worse still on a train in the middle of nowhere. Big metropolitan hospitals are very well equipped to deal with this type of problem and I now fear what might have happened if treatment had been delayed. We were so fortunate to be in Paris and only a couple of blocks from a teaching hospital.