My wife is Greek and she visited Greece a lot when she was younger, but hadn’t been there since we met 30 years ago. So we planned an epic two-week family vacation this summer to see seven cities in Greece.
It was incredible and I had a wonderful time — until I got sick with norovirus.
I felt full all day that last Wednesday, even when I didn’t eat. Then came a night of fevers. I took a shower on Thursday morning to bring my temperature down to 101.1° and went to the medical office. I had a lot of firsts that day:
- First time passing out.
- First time a doctor couldn’t find my pulse and got the paddles ready. (I recovered on my own.)
- First ambulance ride — with lights and sirens!
- First CT scan.
- More NSFW firsts.
Thessaloniki was the final city we planned to visit and I saw it from a hospital bed for three days.
Niki took amazing care of me. It really helps that she is a nurse and that Greek was her first language. Once I was cleared to travel again, we had four flights to get home and nearly two weeks later I still feel like I was just hit by a truck.
I’m just glad it was me who got this and not my wife or one of my kids.
On the same day I got sick, one of our close friends back home lost her wonderful 25-year-old daughter with similar symptoms: fevers, intestinal pain and two different ER visits. We were very lucky. Plus my wife’s mother died in similar circumstances years ago — fevers on a cruise ship and her heart stopping in the ship’s medical office, so this whole ordeal was that much more frightening for her.
On the back of the card you will find all the information regarding your stay at the Clinic.
On our tours of smaller Greek islands like Mykonos and Santorini, our guides had complained that it was hard to get good medical assistance there because there were no good hospitals and frequent blackouts, so the best doctors don’t want to live there and work there. It’s a good thing that this happened as we got to Thessaloniki, the second largest city on mainland Greece and the home of the European Interbalkan Medical Center, which is “the largest, state-of-the-art, comprehensive private hospital in Southeastern Europe.”
They were amazing.
Now it’s time for a nap.
Brian Alvey 