Amsterdam Trip Concluded - Not for the Faint-hearted

This blog deals with the red light district of Amsterdam. There is disturbing information contained within, so you are forewarned.

After my sister and I visited the Anne Frank house we headed back to the central train station. I was surprised to find that what looked like a normal city street coming into town was in fact part of the red light district. This became apparent when we passed a house with actual red lights around the now un-curtained window and a scantily clad woman was standing in it.

Prostitution has always been a part of this busy port city, but it was officially made legal almost one hundred years ago. The red light district is one of the tourist magnets to this city and it is even highlighted in the local hotel magazines under "things to see and do." The quaint house and charming canals cannot hide the seediness of soul of this part of town.

I recently watched a BBC special about Amsterdam and heard a lot I already knew and a few things I didn't know about this 100 million pound (about 150 million dollar) per year industry. That is just the overt money brought in by the sex industry. It is does not include the millions more spent on hotels, restaurants, museums, canal tours and other more traditional tourist expenditures. It was interesting to hear the British presenter refer over to Amsterdam over and over again as Sin City. This is the perspective of a man from a country that has had pornography in its daily newspapers since the mid-70's. They are called the Page Three Girls. My own country has its Las Vegas which is our biggest Sin City. We're a big enough country to have more than one such place, but Vegas stands out, since it, like Amsterdam, it has legal prostitution and encourages most every vice. It was founded by criminal gangs who built the city in the middle of a desert because it was one small place where prostitution was never made illegal in the US. There girls don't stand in windows advertising themselves like shop goods as in Amsterdam. In the US they are kept on ranches, like cattle. Sin knows no national boundaries.

There are 10,000 legal prostitutes and an estimated 1000 illegal ones in Amsterdam alone. The legal ones pay taxes and have semiannual health examinations. The illegal ones are mostly drug addicts who are trying to make money to score their next drug hit. They usually work in and around the central train station. The legal workers average 9 customers a night. They work seven days a week. That is an average of 3,385 men a year.

Eighty percent of all the prostitutes are foreigners. Seventy percent of the women have no legal immigration papers which means they have probably been brought in by traffickers, mostly from eastern Europe. Girls are lured with offers of respectable work in the west where they are told they can make good wages. Once caught in this trap they are too ashamed to return home. I do not know of any help they receive from the western countries they are kidnapped into. The problem is so big that the United Nations has sent out teams to perform a short play in the towns and villages of Eastern Europe showing people what is happening and as a warning to the women.

Eighty-nine percent of the prostitutes have been assaulted on the job by customers or their pimps. One in seven visitors to the red light district will be the victim of a crime - purse snatching, pickpocketing, robberies and mugging. However, there are also more serious crimes and last year (2009) 43 of the 157 murders for the whole country were committed in Amsterdam. There are 90,000 criminal incidents in this area of town alone and 50,000 arrests. Their own police chief called Amsterdam the drug and crime capital of the European Union.

It is illegal to pimp the prostitutes and the police say they know it occurs, but without proof there is nothing they can do about it. I suspect in Dutch fashion, they do not look for evidence, thereby saving themselves, time, trouble, jail space and maintaining a veneer of low hard crimes in their country. A see no evil, sort of philosophy. I am sure part of it is the lack of cooperation of the prostitutes themselves. Violence, shame, coercion and need can form a tight bond of loyalty with a pimp. This area is governed by hardened criminals.

To combat the crime,(can't let things get too out of hand or they will scare the tourists off with their millions of dollars) they have a very visible, gun-toting squad of police who patrol the area.They have twenty police officers walking the streets in the district each night. These men have to qualify with their firearms twice a year to maintain their place on this coveted beat. Apparently there are many who are jealous of them getting this plumb assignment.

So what can get you in trouble with the law in the red light district of Amsterdam? Selling fake drugs for one thing. The legal drug trade has ironically spawned a black market for them in Amsterdam. I watched the police chase a man, who was trying to get rid of fake drugs in the way you'd see someone deal with the real stuff in the US. Selling the real thing is fine, but no snookering the tourists with fake drugs. It is illegal to sell hard drugs, but if caught you will get a 50 Euro fine and an order to stay out of the city central for twenty-four hours. I got a 36 Euro fine for riding my bike by mistake in a pedestrian-only alley. If you violate the order not to return, then you will be arrested. But an arrest usually means a two week stay in the local jail. This is the sentence for selling hard drugs.

Let's see what else constitutes a crime? You cannot urinate on the street or be naked on the street in this area at night. Other times, other place, nudity is not a problem, but not in the sex district at night. However, it is not uncommon for prostitutes to kick johns out of their place naked if they give them some sort of trouble, so a little nudity is not a problem. Even with these lenient policies, there will be 40 arrests per night on average.

I thought of the US as the crime capital of the western world and the Dutch crime rate as very low, but when I went to search for statistics I found this link. US verses Netherlands crime rates I was surprised to see that the Dutch rate right below us per capita in levels of crime and actually have twice the rape rate of the US. We beat them in murder, of course, but if guns were as readily available in the EU I suspect the murder rate would rise considerably. It is so much harder to plunge a knife into someone or hold your hands around their throat for three to four minutes or other up-close-and-personal ways of killing someone. But I digress.

The Netherlands, as well as a growing segment of people in the US, view prostitution as a victimless crime. That would be true if there were no wives or children back home. No sexually transmitted diseases to pass onto innocent and unknowing partners. No violence against the prostitutes and if they were all, willing participants. If people did not have souls and bodies made for a higher purpose. What little girls says, "When I grow up I want to be a prostitute." No one does this by choice. One prostitute when interviewed said she would like to say that the sex workers are not desperate and drug addicted, but she said the truth is 99% of them are. Drugs are the only escape they have, however temporary, from the hell they are living in. Even the men who pay for prostitutes are robbed in their souls in more ways than one. How can it good for someone to indulge themselves selfishly, to transact an act of intimacy and to treat another human being as a commodity?

Prostitution isn't the only sex-based attraction in Amsterdam. There is the Sex Museum and the Drug museum to visit as well.

There are also periodic "events" at local nightclubs such as one held recently for Fetishists. Couldn't get in without a fetish costume, unless you arrived completely naked. Then there are the sex clubs where you can sit and watch people having sex with each other. One neon sign advertises every form of sexual behavior you can think of, including teens and bestiality. One small plaza sports a phallic fountain and a popular paving stone in the walkway depicts a pair of breasts being manhandled. And there are the usual peepshows and strip clubs. It is hard to imagine how completely sex-saturated so much of Amsterdam is.

And worst of all are the eighty thousand tourists who visit the red light district every week. They walk past and try to take photos as if they were visiting the zoo. (Not a good idea since you are likely to get roughed up and your camera taken or broken. This is a business after all and you need to pay for your privileges.)They gape and stare and point. They see it as a sort of exotic vacation and they do not recognize the sickness in their own souls.

Jon and I are again in the process of our annual residency renewal and one of the requirements is new photos. We are in our fifties and the truth be told we don't change much from year to year, but no photo older than six months is allowed, so we help sustain the photo industry with new photos each year at $30 a pop for the two of us. Normally this is a simple thing - sit on the stool, don't show your teeth, no smiling, expose both ears for facial recognition software, and snap, snap, snap. We pick the best of a bad lot and we are done.

This year our photographer was a young man who, when he found out we were American, wanted to talk a bit of politics. Normally if a European wants to talk politics with an American, it is about American politics, healthcare reform, Obama, etc. This young fellow surprised us by wanting to talk about the politics here. He shared with us his frustrations with the parliamentary system of representation. I knew a bit about it, but I didn't realize how little representation it actually gave and in many ways, how little of a sense of control in government for the people. In this system you vote for a party. If one party gets a majority, then they govern. If not, which is the usual case, then they must form a coalition. They have twenty or so parties here in Holland. The people do not vote for their Prime Minister, their equivalent of our President. He is chosen by the parties. He shared how he voted as conservatively as he could, but he said it didn't matter much here. There is no black and white in politics, just shades of gray. There is no one representing your area or a particular constituency. Instead the parties represent ideas or philosophies. For example our neighbors are proponents of the Dieren Party. This is the party for the animals. Their goal is to promote animal welfare and rights. They actually won three seats in parliament in 2006.

They also have a queen, Queen Beatrix, who functions much as the British monarch does. She and her family seem to be much beloved here. They have had a Queen for several generation, though Beatrix has broken the cycle by producing three sons, but the Crown Prince has returned again to the female fold by fathering three daughters.

He shared with us about their constitution. It has one important provision in it and with that one simple statement, he felt their constitution was deprived of all meaning. It ends with a statement that he summed up as saying, " Any law passed will overrule anything in the constitution." He called it a worthless document.

He was frustrated that the people of his nation, when given the chance, have often voted against European Union laws or initiatives, only to have their vote dismissed and their parliament pass the law anyway. Of this, we were aware. This has happened in other EU countries as well.

He talked about the conservative talk radio movement in the US and how many people listen to it. He shared with us about the one, somewhat more conservative, radio station they have here and that it has low listenership. He longed for a place to hear his own ideas expressed and shared by others.

It was actually a brief conversation, but we understood his frustration which amazingly had no bitterness in it. He is a young man, maybe in his mid-twenties. It was refreshing to see a young person who cares about politics and the course of his nation. I don't know if that is common here in the Netherlands, but more and more the young people of America are opted out of the political spectrum and their voting levels are usually low.

All of this as well as the things happening politically in the United States reminded me how important is the Biblical admonition to pray for our leaders that there may be peace and the spreading of the gospel. Being here has made me realize that though my prayers for my nation seemed large, they fell far short of encompassing the globe which is what they should have done. My horizons have enlarged and this encounter with this young man reminded me of that necessity.

Pre-Op

I have entered fully into the Dutch health care system with the latest attack from what has turned out to be gallstones. It took about two and a half months to finally get testing done and a final diagnosis. I had my first spell in April which I wrote about previously. I had another one which began on July 9th. That was a Friday and to escape the oppressive heat we sought one of the two spots in town which have air conditioning - the grocery store and McDonald's. Since it was too hot to cook, we chose the latter. Not a good choice in retrospect, but hindsight is the only thing I have which is 20/20. Later that night I was not feeling well with a kind of indigestion-y sort of feeling which bloomed into pain the next morning. I recognized the sensation and after a few hours Jon and I decided to head for the hospital. We knew this thing needed a diagnosis and not just the best guess of the doctor which is what we received last time. Fortunately as I was getting ready to go, Jon emailed our colleagues about our situation. We heard back immediately from our friend that we could not go to the hospital. (What we cant go to the hospital?!?!) If we did we would be turned away unless I was having a heart attack or something of that seriousness. I would have to go to the huisarts first. That is the family doctor. Since it was now Saturday morning, I could not go to my regular doctor and therefore went to what seemed to be an emergency clinic for Saturdays. It was a doctor's office in the Fire Station/Police Station/ EMT building. We called for an appointment and were told to come right in. We did find that we had to pay before we would be seen and unlike just about every other place in town, including McDonalds, there was no debit card machine. Fortunately between the two of us we managed to come up with the 84E necessary to be seen by the doctor. This is about ten times the rate we pay our regular doctor for a visit. We waited a bit, then I got prodded a bit and questioned a bit and he came up with the diagnosis of a stomach problem and he gave me an antacid. It did hurt in my stomach area, but it also hurt on the right side and in my back. So we went home, lighter in the pocket and still in pain. I took the antacids, but they didn't help. Sunday the pain eased some in the afternoon, but it refused to go away. I tried to eat a few bites on Saturday but it wouldn't stay down. So I fasted and waited for Monday and we headed back to our regular huisarts. We didn't get our regular doctor since he was on vacation and it turned out to be a very good thing, because we haven't been very pleased with our regular doctor and this guy turned out to be just who we needed. He did a more thorough exam, including checking me for appendicitis. He ordered blood work and an ultrasound. He suspected gallstones, but he ordered a thorough ultrasound which covered most of my digestive organs. I went home to wait. The ultrasound was in two days. That afternoon I got a call from the doctor telling me that he had gotten the blood results back and I had an infection. He said we needed to come by his office and get a letter, so we could be admitted to the emergency room of the hospital. Cant get in without one. So we headed to Ede, a town nearby. We went to reception and then waited a while. I had a screening by a nurse, I presume, where they asked me some questions. Then we waited some more. After a bit I was admitted. They put in an IV port, but gave me no saline, though I was so dehydrated my urine was nearly brown. The nurse commented on it, but no fluids were given.They did another EKG and took more blood for testing. We sat and waited. Finally a doctor of some sort, or maybe a resident came in and talked to me and then relayed what I said to a surgeon. She returned and relayed that the surgeon also thought I had gallstones and then they sent us home with an appointment to return tomorrow to talk to a surgeon. When we asked about getting an ultrasound that evening we were told it wasn't sufficient cause to have one done after hours. They still did not know the source of the infection, but I was given no antibiotics. So I was admitted, spent a couple of hours, but received no actual care. Since there was the possibility of an ultrasound the next day, I could not drink anything that evening and my appointment wasn't until 11:00 so now that I was able to hold a little liquid down, I was not allowed to do so. The dehydration continued. The next morning we wandered our way through the hospital finding out where we needed to go and finally saw a surgeon, though he had no idea why I was there. Since I had an appointment for the next day for an ultrasound, he could not get me one that day. So we headed home. A short period where I could eat a little and drink what I could before fasting both again, for the next morning. I arrived for the ultrasound and was told by the technician to strip completely naked. Now I had heard about this part of the Dutch medical system so I was prepared. I understand the need for a certain amount of access for medical personnel, but this was strip naked, no gown, no sheet, nothing for an ultrasound of my belly. Just sprawl yourself out there in the middle of the room on the table. Since I protested she allowed me to keep everything on from the waist down. I protested further and was finally allowed to keep my bra on as well. Believe it or not, it didn't inhibit the ultrasound at all. It was extensive and thorough and strangely painful. I thought she was trying to press the ultrasound thingy all the way to my backbone, but was glad to endure it for a final diagnosis. When all was finished the technician told me the huisarts will get the results in four working days. I was thinking that is more time passing before we know anything and I am still in pain. So the visit the day before that we thought was a waste of time, turned out to be an unexpected gift from the Lord. Since we knew where the surgical examination rooms were, we walked down there to see if it was possible to get an appointment with a surgeon to look at our results. We were allowed to do this since a surgeon had also requested the ultrasound. They let us wait and within a few minutes a surgeon had looked at my file, seen the gallstones, and ordered the operation to remove the stones. He made a note "as soon as possible". We are sent down to arrange for a pre-op exam by the anesthesiology department to see if I am healthy enough for surgery. While there we wondered about going around the corner to see if we could get a date for the surgery. Nope. That has to come by mail. So we waited. Eleven days after we started this journey we finally hear that we have an operating date. It was for August 13th. More than three weeks more to wait. In the meantime I had to be very careful about what I ate so I could "keep my gallbladder calm." It felt like a ticking time bomb in my belly.

Since Jon and I were in the States when the whole national healthcare bill debate and vote occurred my mind has been often on the healthcare system of the United States. As a family we have had no health insurance and had a baby during that time. We have had great insurance and insurance that was just okay. We also had no insurance for three years while we were on the mission field the first time. I have to say that I was not happy to see the healthcare bill pass in the US. I think our system had some holes and people fell through them, but the answer was really a very simple one. Let people without insurance buy into the medicaid (governmental) health plan (This is the system that covers the poor and the elderly already in our country) if they wanted to at an affordable price. Problem solved. The one thing that is used as a mantra by those who wanted to push healthcare reform in the US was the idea that everyone needed to have access to healthcare. The truth is everyone had access to healthcare. I know. We lived it and when we had no insurance we used resources which the church and other charitable organizations have set up to help fill the gaps in day to day healthcare for folks. Everyone, always, had access to emergency healthcare, regardless of insurance or not, foreigner or not, illegal immigrant or someone with premium insurance. The one thing that struck me most about my experience during this health issue is my lack of access to healthcare. If I had been in the States I would have gone to the hospital on Saturday. Had an ultrasound that day and probably had the surgery that day or the next at the latest. I would have been well on my way to recovery long before I even had a diagnosis here and my extra pain and suffering would have been avoided.

A neat and tidy Amsterdam

On my recent trip to Amsterdam we saw a work crew cleaning up the sidewalks of the city. Two men with twig brooms were sweeping, or better stated, trying to sweep the sidewalk while a third man used a stream of water to push the garbage to the curb. What struck me about this is that the men were using a bundle of twigs tied to a wooden pole to try to sweep the sidewalk. My first thought was that this was the third millennium and here are men in a western country in a modern city trying in vain to sweep a sidewalk with a very primitive broom. I wondered why they didn't have a modern synthetic broom, or even one made from straw. Either would have worked better than what they had. My next thought was that they couldn't use either one of those here because you cant buy one. At least I haven't been able to find one. My interest in brooms comes from my own broken broom sitting in my closet and my recent hunt for a replacement. I confess it hurts my back to bend over and just use the bristle part for sweeping (the broom portion has broken from the plastic handle and cant be repaired) or to use my little hand broom for bigger jobs than it was intended for. You can get push brooms very readily. They are available everywhere, but they aren't useful in every circumstance, as the sidewalk cleaners know. At first when I couldn't find them I thought it was because the side sweep broom was unknown here, but seeing the brooms in action in the city made me realize that they were. So now there is a new question. Why wasn't this type of broom updated when the push brooms were invented or imported or updated? Why is it not available? Does everyone who needs one simply get a branch-style broom? Do they make their own? I've never seen one for sale - at least not that I have noticed. Is it a decision to support an ancient craft as part of the culture, like laying bricks for roads and sidewalks? A simple thing to spend so much time pondering, perhaps, but I find there are keen insights into a culture by understanding the "why" of something they do. What lies on the surface is the observation that things are much harder than they need be. What lies under the surface is often a reason that reflects some fundamental and powerful cultural value.

A trip to Amsterdam

My sister was here to visit and since she wanted to see the Anne Frank house, we made a trip into Amsterdam. We went early to avoid the long lines that can sometimes develop at the museum. We took the train in, since we cant really get into Amsterdam by car in the mornings, unless we head in before 6 in the morning. Sections of the highway become a parking lot with morning commuters. We used to be able to buy what was called a strip card to ride the buses and trams in the cities, but this has been done away with. Instead residents can go through a fairly complicated two day process to get a special card which they can then load with money electronically to use to pay for passage on buses and trams. However you cannot use this chipcard to pay for anyone else riding with you, so anyone not possessing the chipcard must buy a day pass. It cost 7 Euros each - about 10 dollars. Since the house was only a mile or so from the train station we decided to hoof it and save our money. We got into the museum in short order and shuffled our way through the exhibit and then into the Annex itself. We both had just finished rereading Anne's diary while on our trip through England so the events that she wrote about were still fresh in our minds. She and the others suffered a lot living in such tight quarters. I recognized the tremendous stress the occupants were living under from the quarrels and behavior that Anne wrote about. The museum is empty of furniture and it is sometimes hard to imagine how crowded and cramped it was there. However there are two things which poignantly bring back to me the human factor of this empty place. One is the pictures that Anne pasted on her wall - movie stars, cute children, colorful photos. She was just a girl when she went into hiding. The other was the small map on the wall where they were using pins to plot the Allies advancement towards the city. It made me think of what hope they had to finally be free of their little prison. Just a month before the Allies made it to Amsterdam, someone made an anonymous phone call to the police and turned in these folks. How evil is a heart that would do such a thing. The Germans were losing. They were being pushed back. Many, many Dutch people opposed the Nazis and there was much done to save Jews and others from death in Holland, but there were also those who collaborated and there was even a Dutch Nazi party. Antisemitism knows no national border. It can be found everywhere. No one has ever found out who did it. They were on the last train that left the area for the death camps. Everyone, but Anne's father perished in the concentration camps. Her mother, her sister, the single man who joined them, and a family of husband, wife and teenage son. All dead. Anne herself died of illness just a month before the end of the war itself. Perhaps if she had known her father was still alive, she might have held on. Perhaps the accumulation or stress and suffering over those years of confinement had finally robbed her of the will to live and even the physical strength to stay healthy. I do not know. I do know she has put a face on the holocaust like no one else has.

The Hair Scarf Again

I was called a name the other day. I don't know what the name was and it is probably best I don't. From the look on the young man's face who said it, I know it was not a pleasant one. I was riding to the office and since I had my hair in a headband, I was wearing a scarf so it wasn't completely windblown when I arrived at my destination. I've written before about how I feel when I wear a headscarf in a previous blog. (I have cut and pasted it below for those who haven't read it before.) I get stares and looks which have made me feel that folks view me as Muslim when I wear my scarf. This incident cemented that perception. I was approaching a school, biking along, minding my own business. I heard someone call something out, but not expecting anyone to be talking to me, I paid no attention. This same word was called out again, then again each time louder. Finally I looked in the direction of the voice. When I did a saw a young man glowering at me and he repeated the word. I tried to remember what it was so I could ask my Dutch friend when I got to the office, but it was time for staff meeting and by the time it was over I could not remember it well enough for her to understand it. Again, it is probably just as well. I didn't really need a translation. His face said it all. Such seething anger in someone so young. It reminded me of a painting Jon and I saw at a place which used to be called The Biblical Museum and is now the Orientalis Museum. I will write a whole blog on that experience another time, but in it was this painting. It showed the profile of a volcano and below ground level were words of racism and anger and tension. And the title or remark with the painting was that The Netherlands was about to blow like a volcano from this pressure. I believed it when I saw the painting. We have seen signs of this. Underneath the veneer of tolerance, which is so highly valued here, is this resentment and anger. The government is making it increasingly expensive and difficult for people to immigrate here or even reside in Holland, as we do. It is a passive way of restricting or limiting immigration. It is a method which will fit with the Dutch value of tolerance, while perhaps having some effect on the rising foreign population in this already overcrowded land. There has even been talk among candidates and holders of office to more openly restrict immigration. This incident with the young man tells me that perhaps that explosion is coming sooner than I thought. I do so wish I could think of another way to hold my hair tidy when I bike.

Hair Scarf

I have longish hair. When I bother to fix it, I like it stay nice. The problem is that if I leave the house I am often biking to my destination. When I bicycle, I make my own breeze and my hair gets quickly messed up. To counter this I will wear a scarf over my hair. I wear the square kind, folded into a triangle and tied under my chin. Think movie actresses of the 60's driving in their convertibles. They had breezy problems too. I always feel self-conscious when I wear my scarf. Scarves are never worn here in a western way. The only women covering their head or hair are Muslim. I wonder if I will be mistaken for a Muslim woman. I am not sure the casual observer would notice the difference in scarf styles or how I wear it. I do not cover my bangs and my hair hangs out the back, but still I feel funny at the possibility of being mistaken for a Muslim. I think in part because I have a hard time getting my mind around the concept of a woman's hair being such a sexualized item that every strand of it must be concealed. The men in my family assure me that a woman's hair is very alluring, but is that the same thing? Can it really send men into such paroxysms of lust that it must be totally concealed? You never hear construction workers making rude comments about the shine and body of a woman's hair. I didn't know for decades that men even noticed that women had hair on their head nor that the men cared anything about it. I do know this. It seems that men are universally interested in the woman in their life having long hair and women tend to have a love/hate relationship with their own hair. Hence the phrase - bad hair day - meaning if your hair doesn't do right, then nothing goes right for the rest of the day. How a woman's hair looks to her can profoundly affect how she feels about how she looks in general. I know one young woman who, after getting a bad hair style at the salon, came home in tears and told her mother that she would rather have all her teeth fall out than have her hair! I think the other problem I have is being mistaken for an adherent to a religion which I see as so oppressive to women. To me the head scarf symbolizes this oppression. When I was in language classes there were mostly Muslim men and women. One day three of us women were in the computer lab and the young Turkish woman took the opportunity to take off her head scarf and show us her pretty, wavy long hair. She longed to show it and to have it admired. It is perhaps a universal thing. This relationship of women to their hair. The other day I headed out of our neighborhood onto the main road. I had to stop for a pedestrian, a woman in a robe and hajib (head scarf). She saw me sitting in my car with the head scarf, nodded and motioned me to go ahead. That has never happened before. Did she see me as a sister under the scarf? It adds to my unease.

I had my first run-in with the Dutch emergency medical services last week. I was attending a concert in a church in a nearby town. A colleague was organizing the concert to finish a degree in worship music she has been working on for several years. I had gotten a ride with another colleague and was enjoying it immensely. About halfway through my back began to bother me. I didn't think too much of it, knowing that folding chairs and my back don't often agree with each other, but as the evening progressed the discomfort turned to actual pain. After the concert was over I got up to visit a bit with folks when I suddenly felt very nauseous and made a mad dash to the restroom where nature took its course. I felt a little better, but still not right, but felt well enough to go back and visit a bit. A few minutes later another mad dash. Now I needed to let my friend, who had driven me to the event, know that I needed to get home. We got home without incident and I then spent the next couple of hours being sick every ten to fifteen minutes. I tried to go to bed. I kept thinking when my stomach was empty I would feel better. Didn't happen. As I was lying in bed I began to realize that what I was feeling wasn't just nausea, but I was having pain and some fairly significant pain in my chest. It was a squeezing pressure kind of feeling. Okay, I am slow, but I realized this wasn't just a stomach flu or something. My stomach was long ago emptied and I was still getting sick. Then there was this strange pain. So I headed to the computer to Google my symptoms and it came up with heart attack or digestive problems. I didnt think it was a heart attack. We have no history of this in the family and my cholesterol is always good and I'd had an EKG before surgery in the fall, but I thought about lots of folks who didnt think they were having a heart attack who actually were. Now I knew I needed medical attention, but I was alone since Jon had been away to the Partner's Conference. By this point he was due home in a half hour or so, so I got dressed, sat on the sofa and waited for him to get home. When he arrived, I let him know the situation and he was preparing to take me to the hospital. That posed two problems. One is our car was not legal to drive since we had been away and the car had missed its inspection and to avoid some of the road tax we had put the car on "vacation" and hadnt finished all the paperwork to get it put back into our name.The second problem was we didnt have a clue where the nearest hospital was and it didnt seem like the time to go wandering all over looking for it. So we looked up the emergency number for Holland and called an ambulance. They arrived in no time and introduced themselves then got down to checking my heart. The EKG showed that all was well and in between getting sick, let them know my other symptoms. The EMT's began to suspect my gallbladder. They knew I was sick enough to need to be seen by the doctor in a nearby city, whom they called. Then instead of putting me in the ambulance and taking me, there began to be a debate of sort between the doctor and the EMT. The EMT said I was too sick to get to the hospital on my own and the doctor wanted me to come there to be seen. For some reason, traveling by ambulance to the hospital was not an option. So in the end, the doctor came to my house. I was tender in the upper right quadrant of my abdomen, had pain in my back and was throwing up, so she concluded it was gallbladder problems. That was it. No x-rays or ultrasound or whatever is used to confirm diagnosis of gallbladder problems. Just an assumption that that was what it was. I did get a "sit pill" for pain and nausea. You can imagine what that is. Told to watch for a fever and to avoid eating any fats for a few days. I took my medication which didnt seem to help any, but perhaps it kept things from getting worse. I spent a sleepless night where I learned not to lie on my left side or that would initiate yet bout of violent illness. By late morning the next day the pain had subsided enough that I was able to sleep. I slept on and off the rest of the day and the next night. I watched my diet and my temperature for the next few days. Ate little the first day and worked my way into some sort of reasonable amount of plain foods. I was quite weak and had little energy for several days. Couldn't even sit at the computer and do emails. Was tender for several days then by the end of the week the tenderness was gone so I began adding some fat into my diet. Amazing how much a bit of fat has to do with flavor. Over several days continued adding foods until I could eat normally. So a week and a half later I feel normal and can eat normally, though I find I am still working on my stamina for things like walking, etc. and I haven't tried biking yet. I wonder what the protocol is for this situation in the States. Probably would have gone to the hospital and I expect there would have been some sort of diagnostic testing. Wonder if surgery would have been done. Probably would have depended on the doctor. I think some or more surgically inclined than others. I am so glad not to have surgery here. I dread the thought of it. But I would not care to have that thing go off again.

Reconnected

After more than a week I am finally reconnected to the world again. Before we headed to the US for furlough our internet was not working very well. We wanted to discontinue service with our provider at that time, but you must sign a one year contract for services such as the internet and it was automatically renewed and so we were stuck for another year with not so great service. My Dutch friend, Elly, helped us getting it working before we left with calls to the support staff for the internet and trying some of this and some of that. I thought we needed a new modem at the time since rebooting it would get the internet going again, at least for a few minutes at a time. However, the tech folks were reluctant to send out a new modem and since we did get it working a bit better we were stuck as we were unless we wanted to foot the bill for the new modem. Yet another occasion when Jon and I would say to each other, " We aren't in Kansas any more, Toto." We hated the idea of throwing money out the window while we were gone, so we asked whether we could suspend our contract for the six months we were gone and start it up again when we returned. Turns out we would have to pay a penalty for that and then pay to reconnect when we returned. Wasn't going to really save us any money. Unfortunately. we return to an internet that will not work, no matter how our friend, Elly, and the tech support people worked and fiddled with our modem. Then they finally relented and sent a new one. Sharp and snazzy looking too. I did have to wait around the house without leaving for days, lest I miss the delivery guy. So now I am reconnected again and in someways really missed the internet. Wanted to look up something. Nope, cant do that. Wanted to check on something. Nope cant do that either. And I knew the emails were stacking up. And stacking up. And that was on top of the ones that had piled up during furlough. I did spend a few hours this afternoon getting the emails down a bit, but I know it will be many days before they are all answered. We have found our transition back to have gone amazingly smoothly. We had minimal jet lag. Thanks, I think, to our taking sleeping medications to help reset our biological clocks. It has been sunny quite a bit, which is always good for my disposition. Our little cat traveled very well on the return flight and made nary a peep through the long day confined to a small cat carrier without food or water. She seemed quite content and even now likes to go into the carrier and take her afternoon nap. (In fact she is resting in there as I write this.) She seems to remember the rules of the house and we have had to add a few more tricks to keep her off of counter and table tops now that she is big enough to jump up onto them. Our coworkers welcomed us home with a personal taxi service from the airport, thus saving us the hauling of our four heavy bags from train to train as well as Jon's computer, a carry-on and the cat. That was a huge help! We found our fridge stocked with food for a few days and the house in good order so we didnt have to do much the first few days except rest and get unpacked. We are fortunate to have a very thoughtful and caring group of folks to work along side. And to put the cherry on top, we found that the family with the whiny child had moved away in our absence. No idea why they moved after less than two years in the house and after so many renovations and improvements to the property, but gone they are. It has been incredibly quiet and we have enjoyed the peace. Now that we are back home and the internet as flowing freely, I expect to be much more regular with my blog so check back often.

I know it has been for-ever (think Valley girl) since I last wrote an entry for my blog. Sometimes I would have a fleeting thought about something interesting to write, but mostly my brain is either so full of things to keep track of or tired from thinking, that I haven't had much left with which to muse and ponder. There has also been the issue of internet or computer accessibility for about half of our furlough which made posting an impossibility. It seems that when I had time, there was no access and when I had a bit of access there has been no time. Add to that what must surely be boring to read - how our furlough is going, so I have forgone posting. But since I have heard from several people about my neglect I have finally gotten enough nudge in the right direction to get myself at the keyboard and will tell a bit of what has been going on. We have now been in the States for five of the six months of our furlough. I thought that there would be more rest in this one with the extended time, recovery time from surgery and the last three months with less planned, but somehow the time has filled up and we have been pretty busy anyway. I actually brought a few projects to work on to stave off what I thought would be some idle time and to be sure I had what it took to stave off boredom. They remain in a drawer untouched and some other things which Jon and I expected to do have had to fall by the wayside. We did successfully have surgeries and have recovered fully for which we are very thankful. We did have Thanksgiving and Christmas with family which was a complete joy. I think this Christmas was the best I have had since the kids were little and each one of them was a treasure to me. I have maintained my reputation as one who possesses an anti-snow aura, though I am one of the very few who seems to really love the white stuff. It has snowed and snowed in Barneveld, which has hardly gotten a flurry in the four years we have lived there. And Muskegon, Michigan where we have spent most of the winter has received far less than its usual bounty. There was enough snow and ice on a hillside in a park nearby that Jon and I and three of our four kids got to go sledding near the end of January. It was really fun! We've been hearing about our Mitten's mischief while she has been hanging out with Christy and her cat, Sayori. She is such a little rascal and continues to make us laugh even from a distance. The Lord knew what He was doing when He brought her to us. She is so silly and we do need to laugh. It truly is good medicine. We've tried unsuccessfully to keep up with our usual routine - prayer together every day, exercise, walking, eating right. It has been hit and miss with most of those. I never feel quite right in the day without all those elements in place. I saw my Grandmother for the last time without knowing it in November when we celebrated her belated birthday. I attended her funeral with all my children in February. It still doesn't seem real that she is gone. I think there was a part of me that did not think she would ever die. The funeral did provide an opportunity to see cousins that I grew up with and I hadn't seen in about twenty-five years. It was good to meet their wives and children whom I had never seen at all. We've traveled a lot, rested a bit in between and seen some family. I will try to post some blogs about the specifics as time permits. We most recently returned from Colorado which was a really great trip. Hopefully there will be more posting before a further week has gone by.