Stolen Appendix! (Brazil)

For those of you who don’t know (that is a majority of you) I had my appendix taken out in Brazil. To make a long story short, I had stomach pains on our 3rd day at sea after we left port in Cape Town, South Africa. We were still 5 days out from Brazil and since the doctor felt it was appendicitis, they sped the ship up (the other option was flying a sea plane out to us and flying me in but since I reacted to the antibiotics fairly quickly and my fever went down, they chose the second option). Anyway, we ended up getting into Brazil after 3 days of speeds of 29.5 knots (we average about 15 knots throughout the voyage so this was fast). If you are interested in the rest of the story, here it is:

4/6

12am
I took my malaria medication because I had realized that I had forgotten.

3am
I thought because I hadn’t eaten in a while and that I didn’t take much water with my malaria medication that that was the reason for my stomach ach. I went to bed but could not find a comfortable position to lay in. I got up and had some water along with some bread to see if that would help. Of course, it didn’t. I got back into bed but still could not sleep because of the pain. I tried to get up again but fell to the floor in pain so my roomate called the Pursar’s Desk to find who was on call. Karl who lived down the hall from us was the nearest doctor and he came immediately. I got back on my bed and Karl did what he could with the limited resources he had and decided that there were too many possibilities to determine what was wrong with me. He gave me some Vicadin to take and said that he would be back around 6am to see if anything had changed.

6am
The Vicadin worked for about an hour and then I woke back up with the same pain as before. I threw up some. Karl came back, checked my vitals again and told me that I would have to wait until the clinic was open if I could.

8am
I was moved to the hospital ward on deck two and was hooked up to an IV, blood was drawn and I was given a suppository. I woke up periodically thoughout the day with a finger feeding me pills. I slept well since I had morphine in me and felt nothing. I remember feeling the morphine spread through my body, it was incredible how fast it reached every part of me.

12pm
An announcement was made to the shipboard community that there was a passenger (me) who needed medical aid and that was the reason for the sudden surge of speed. The speed was so great (29.5knots officially) that there was actually what is called a ‘rooster tail’ coming out of the back of the ship. They are going to take me off the ship and to a Brazilian hospital to run more tests and see if it isn’t my appendix.

4/7
9am
My body temperature dropped back down to a more comfortable level after spiking at 105.5*. At one point my roomate said that I was hilucinating. Apparently I had said something along the lines of "Shhh! The oranges are sleeping!" That afternoon I watched a few movies to entertain myself since everyone was still in classes

930pm
Adam, Maggie, Jess and I played Skip-bo for a while to pass the time. Tried to sleep after that since I was to get up early in the morning to head to the hospital.

4/8
8am

Awaiting my fate

Having immediate clearance to get off the ship, I disembarked the ship and got into the ambulance without Dr Mike. He took forever to get to me. He was out there taking pictures, having a great time, talking with the driver. Oh, by the way, this ambulance that I was laying in, was an Isuzu pickup truck with a topper and I am not joking. Laying in the ‘stretcher’ my legs were hanging out the back and I had to scrunch (mind you it is my abdomen that is in pain) to fit into the bed. Once I was situated, the driver slammed the tailgate against my feet. Thanks bud. Salvador is known for its cobblestone streets. Not something you hope for when your legs are vibrating as they're pressed against the tailgate of the truck. My entire body shook the next 10min until I arrived at the hospital.

830am
Arrived at hospital where no one speaks English but somehow we get into an office where I can lay down and get checked.

10am
Blood tests and an ultrasound were done and the doctor found that I had appendicitis with some secreting liquid. Shortly after, doctor Mike asks me if I have any money so he can go eat lunch. I gave him about $30 and he left.

Getting another shot

230pm
Get shuffled into the operating room, hooked up to a few more IV’s and then the mask over my face and…

530pm
Wake up to the operating team laughing behind me out of sight, but I have no idea at what. Get moved into my room where more language barriers were built. No matter how many times I said that I didn’t understand Portuguese the nurse just talked louder and said things over and over thinking that would solve the problem.

After spending a few hours of waking up to a nurse walking into my room whispering words in another language and then hooking up new IV’s to me and walking back out without so much as an understanding, I started walking around. The doctor said (or what I understood from his broken English) that I would not be able to return to the ship because I needed to rest and be under watch by the hospital. This was a shock to me.

4/11
8am Breakfast!! I got to eat my first ‘meal’ since last Tuesday afternoon before all of this began. It wasn’t very good but I ate it all. The doctor stopped by and gave me the good news that I would be released at 1030 today. There was so much to get done, the bill itself was a headache to figure out because no one spoke English to help me get things organized. They wouldn't accept my medical insurance coverage since I was a foreigner so I had to pay cash. I was able to cover most of the expenses but fortunately the port authority guy that had coordinated my transportation to the hospital was there and he paid the rest until I worked out having money from home sent on to him. Very nice of him to do that.

Tonight I went to dinner at a traditional diner with Dr Russ, Professor Lang and his wife and Ann. The Lang’s spoke Portuguese which made everything easy. We took taxis up the hill (Salvador has two parts of it, the upper and lower city which can be ascended by car or you can take an elevator) and man were they steep hills. They were cobblestone the entire way. The winding and turning was incredible, it seemed as though the cab was not going to be able to make it up the hill and at one point the wheels actually spun before catching some rock again. It was just like in the movies with buildings on either side and a narrow street going up the side of the hill.

The food at the diner was amazing, it was my first official meal after surgery and it was excellent. The desert of sliced banana sprinkled in brown sugar and something else was great along with the national drink Caperania which was a little on the lime side. After dinner, we went to a dance and drum show in a small theater that sat no more than 100 people. The show consisted of singing and a lot of Capoeira which is an African fight brought to Brazil by the slaves from Angola in the colonial period. The show also had a man who played with fire, spinning with it on his head, placing his hands in it (catching them on fire) and stepping into it as well along with eating fire. There was also a solo with a very interesting instrument which I am not sure what the name is but I am sure that when I buy one on the street I will include it in here (I found it! It's called a Bidding Bow)

After the show we went up the cobblestone road to an outdoor bar and had some melzbeir which is also a Brazilian drink that is a concoction of regular beer and a sweeter tasting mix. The city is amazing and I have only seen a little bit of it. I am very excited to see more of it tomorrow.

4/12

The elevator

Today is my older sister’s birthday and so I want to wish her a happy birthday. Today I pretty much just took the day to walk around and enjoy Salvador. The streets of Brazil are filled with shops and people everywhere. The unique thing about Salvador like I said before is that it is separated into two parts, the upper and lower city. This may sound simple in and of itself but in fact the city is divided by a hill that is virtually straight up. The first day back after surgery, we took a cab ride to the top of the hill which was unbelievably steep and windy and all cobblestone. This is the difficult way to the top that was the only way until 1972 (a little history lesson here) when an elevator and cable car were erected to transport people between the two sections of the city. The elevator has since been renovated, cost .05 reil to go up or down it and to me is ingenious. Anyway, I spent the day milling around Salvador, taking it easy.

Around lunch time I ran into a college student who was from D.C. and was studying in Brazil for the semester. She told me that she had been studying with a group of only 10 other Americans and had not talked to anyone besides them. In her studies, she has 3 hours of Portuguese everyday so she knew the language well enough. Bored with being with the same 9 other students I was a refreshing change for her. She took me to a restaurant called Comida Por Kilo (for those of you who may not know Spanish very well that means Food by the Kilo). It was a nice little restaurant and we had a great time.

4/13

Could make this a postcard!

Taking it easy again today, I went out with Dr Russ to just walk around Salvador again. We stopped in various shops. Wondering around a bit more, we found a small restaurant and sat down for something to eat. Russ and I ended up splitting a bottle of white wine with some cheese and that got us talking. After an hour, Professor Fessler and Suhoza showed up and joined us. We ended up staying for dinner with them and talked for hours. Tonight was probably the best night in port the entire voyage, we had a great time talking about everything, laughing about my ordeal at the hospital and other things that have happened on the ship.
Sadly, I had to leave them since I had an appointment at the hospital for a check up tonight and just as I was a few minutes away from getting to the pier, it began to rain. It wasn’t a down pour but it was steady enough to drench me. Anyway, the check up went well and the doctor said I was cleared to continue on to Venezuela.

4/14
Today was another day to relax, not much done but a little market shopping. In the indoor market, there was an upstairs and a downstairs from the main level. I had seen many people head downstairs but from the way the stairs were, I could tell that there weren’t any shops down there, yet curiosity got the better of me. I descended the stairs and found myself in a dungeon type basement. It had all the feelings of a medieval time, a castle like atmosphere and very creepy. There were concrete walkways through the basement that allowed you to walk around the foot or so of stagnate water all around you. I later found out that this was where the slave trade in Brazil took place. The slaves from Africa were brought into the dungeon type area, to that very basement, stored and brought out to be sold in the market area that was in use to this day. Did you know that of the 3 million slaves that came out of Africa, 1/3 of them were traded in Brazil and only 500,000 were actually brought to North America? By North America I mean the entire continent, Canada included. The country of Brazil had more slaves than an entire continent!

Well, enough of a history lesson (the truth compared to what we learn of in grade school and high school), I have 3 days of class that I have to make up, hope things are going well back there.

Thinking about making a t-shirt for my experience in Brazil....thoughts?

Temperature = 105.5
IV sticks = 6
Stitches = 7
Appendix lost in Brazil = Priceless

Last night in Brazil

Kloofing (S. Africa)

I have been constantly writing this email on the day things happen to be a little more accurate and since I have a short memory problem, it's probably better this way. Here is the South African Update:

Table Mtn, Cape Town, S. Africa

Coming into Cape Town at 8am (same as every port) gave us an incredible view with Table Mountain peeking over the horizon well before we even saw the city. Table Mountain gets it's name from the top of it being very flat. It is a popular climb taking roughly 2 hours and has around 300 different trails ranging in difficulty. Even the most seasoned veterans of mountain climbing have been stranded on the side of this mountain. There is a cable car that runs up it as well and has restaurants at the top. You can also go abseiling (repelling) part of the way down (actually the longest natural repel in the world). The locals call the occasional cloud cover, which we got to see, a table cloth because it only covers the top of the mountain and will sometimes inch its way down the side of the cliffs making it appear even more like a table cloth. Legend has it that this cloud/fog comes from a retired pirate who fled to the mountain after leaving his ship and smokes a pipe from time to time.



 The first day, a few of us left as soon as the ship was cleared and set out to find out exactly what we were going to do since we had no prior plan. We found a Cape Town Travel Info place that seemingly every SAS student was at. We finally got up to one of the counters and set up a trip for the afternoon. We decided that we wanted to visit the Winelands and since everyone seemed to be going there in a few days on bikes, we decided to go on horseback. We took a private car to a small out of town place, more a hobby farm, and met a very nice family who saddled us up and provided a guide to take us through the winelands and taste test some wine. I rode a black stallion named Spencer who reminded me of Shadow and Thunder. Thunder was a horse I rode at Heartland Ranch in South Dakota and Shadow was a horse my mom took care of years ago and she took me some Saturdays to ride it with her. The views we saw as we made our way through the backcountry were incredible. We rode for over an hour until we got to the winery called Stellenbosch. We had the opportunity to taste test wine but since we left so late in the day, we only had 15 minutes before they closed. We rode the horses back to the hobby farm and had a great conversation with the owners who currently pay a commission to the agency in the city to recommend them to people who want to go through the winelands. We told them about The Lonely Planet and how it has so much information in it that people rely on and if they could somehow get into it, their business would increase and they wouldn’t have to use the agency in the city anymore. We told them that we would write in to The Lonely Planet and recommend them.

Today I heard there was a shark attack off the coast and someone (not sure if SAS) fell off Table Mountain.



Taking a break

 On our second day, I rented a bike and took it to the outskirts of town and randomly ended up at Table Mountain National Park after about 2 hours of biking. The park was full of trails so I had the chance to actually put the mountain bike to the test and had a spectacular view of the entire city below and waterfront. After going around the park I headed back to the waterfront. It was downhill the entire way so it took me roughly 15 minutes to literally fly down passing cars as I did. Once back in town, I saw the movie Hitch with Will Smith. My favorite part of the entire movie wasn’t even in it, it was a commercial before the starting of the show. The commercial started with a shot of a man dressed as a sheriff of the wild west, the screen was redish brown and had the flickering of an old projector/reel movie player. The sheriff walked up to a man in the saloon who had 3 smoking bullet holes to the left of his head and said to him “I thought I told you never to come back here!” and the assumed outlaw said, “Well, I was going to be I thought…" nih—nih—nih, nih nih nih nih nih—nih—nih” and the sherrif says “oh” and suddenly the outlaw as a double-barrelled shotgun pointed at the sheriff and with a bewildered look on his face, the sheriff gets shot. Then, a woman’s voice comes over as the commercial ends and says “If they had wanted a cell phone in the movie, they would have put it there.” (If you don’t get it, the outlaw’s ‘nih—nih” was a cell phone going off and the sudden appearance of a shotgun was to show that you totally missed something important). Anyway, I thought it was funny. After the movie we went to a resturant called St. Elmos which made pizzas in a brick oven. Those of you who know, last summer I and a few others built a brick oven where at Round Hill and we got to try it out. The resturant was great, small and comfortable. The pizza was great (although they had an odd assortment of toppings which did not included sausage, pepperoni or any usual Pizza Hut toppings) but the pizza we made with the one I built at Round Hill was a lot better (I am bias though).

View from the top

Hiking up to Jump

The third day we went Canyoning which is a combination of kloofing, abseiling and rock climbing. I’m guessing that most of you have only heard of rock climbing before so I will use the term in the states that best describes what kloofing and abseiling are. First, kloofing is the same as rock jumping into a pool of water where abseiling is pretty much the same as repelling except that you repel through waterfalls. So this is how this all went down. We got up at 6am and headed to our pick up point but no one was there. We waited and waited but still no one. Finally they showed up and as it turns out, they were told the wrong time by the company who hired them. It was two men who started their own company 18 months ago called Frixion (friction) Adventures and had exclusive rights to a particular canyon we would be making our way down. After about a 45 minute drive, we arrived at a small cabin in the woods. It had wood paneling on the inside and smelled like a forest. We had breakfast there and took a truck up to the top of the mountain. Once at the top, we began our descent to a point where a creek began (at this point all of us had our harness and helmits on). We got to the creek, waded across and came to our first waterfall. The point of abseiling is to repel down the face of the waterfall into the pool below and head to the next one making your way down the mountain. After our first abseil, we came to the kloofing point (remember what that is??). Our guides (Brett and Scott) had us first jump off the 4 and 6 meter (12 and 18 feet approximately) a few times before allowing us to try the 15 meter. Don’t worry, the pool we were jumping into was over 20 meters deep with no rocks. Although I had no idea what I was doing way up there, I jumped. The proper way to jump from rocks into water from that far up is to have every part of you body tucked in if your diving or going in feet first (with shoes). Well, my left arm obeyed my command to stick to my side but my right seems to have a mind of its own and stuck straight out as I hit the water.



Landing Wrong

When I finally surfaced, I could hardly use my arm to swim the 10 meters to the edge and get out. My arm was so red after that. After I went, my friend Maggie went but she did worse than me. She lost control of her whole body and actually went into the water in a “L” shaped position and could barely move at all after that. After we finished cliff jumping, we headed further down stream (wadding in the stream to get down) and just before our next abseil we had lunch with a fire to warm us up. Then it was on to our last few abseils but before we got to finish even our first one, it started to rain. The nice thing about what we were doing was that it already involved getting wet in the waterfalls so it didn’t really bother us. It made the rocks that were at one point dry, wet but then again, just about everything we had been walking on and repelling down was slippery so it made little difference. When we did finish for the day, we headed back to the house and had dinner with our guides. It was a candle lit dinner since there was no electricity to the house and the generator was broken (they don’t like using the generator anyway because of the noise and it takes away from being in the middle of nowhere). Since the farm we were presently on had a trout farm, we got fresh smoked trout. Our guides were incredible, they had the know-how and skill along with a positive attitude and love of what they were doing. They were still small as a company (their office was one of their homes) but they have big ideas for the canyon in the near future.

On our fourth day in Cape Town, we headed to the other side of Table Mountain to Kirsenbosch Botanical Garden to relax for a little while. A world famous garden, Kirsenbosch used to be a forest 400 years ago but in the late 1600’s the trees were harvested to fulfill the need of timber for houses in the growing communities. Soon, the area was completely cleared and erosion from the streams coming off the mountain changed the landscape. It was farmed for a few years and then in the mid 1800’s a man by the name of Kirsenbosch purchased the land and began to turn it back over to nature. His dying wish was to have a garden behind Table Mountain that people can come to and see what the land used to be like before development. When he died in 1908, it was taken over by another man who followed up the dream and became the first director of the gardens in 1913. The gardens itself is incredibly huge. I walked around the outskirts of it and it took over an hour to get around. At one point I found myself walking up a hill that by the time I got to the top, there was an incredible view of the city below.

After being at the gardens for a few hours, my friend Katie and I decided to walk up Table Mountain. We found the only path leading out of the gardens and asked an employee how long it would take and they told us 3 hours. It was 4:45 so we knew we would have to move quickly. We walked for about 15 minutes and ran into 2 people from the ship going up the same route and linked up with them. After walking up well over 3,000 steps dug into the mountain side, we came to a rock quarry with rocks the size of cars and saw that the path went through. After we made our way over and around the rocks, the path started to go down. We walked and walked but never went uphill again for a while. Confused, we continued since this was the only way we could go. After about 30 minutes, it leveled off and the path widened, was well maintained and at some points, we actually walked on boardwalks that were still being constructed. The views we got of the city below were amazing and even as we were skirting along the ridgelines and through gorges and valleys the drop below (for those of you who don’t know, I hate heights) was quiet far. At one point, we came across a broken brick building and two canons overlooking the city. The canons oddly enough, were not facing the bay but right over the heart of the city. At this building, the trail seemed to disappear and it took us a while to find it again. Soon we approached the 3 hour mark and the sun was beginning to set but we had still not arrived at the top. We could see the ship and the tram that ran to the top for people who didn’t want to walk it but we were nowhere near it. We kept skirting along the middle of the mountain with the only visible sign of us ascending was a path well in front of us heading straight up a gorge. Just as we reached the gorge, the sun was set and we decided to not be a victim of the mountain and headed for the road we had seen below us. Once we made it to the road, we found someone who knew where we could find a taxi and began to head up the road. The wind had picked up at an incredible rate and luckly was at our back to push us in the right direction. The wind must have been at least 50 miles an hour. After we walked for another 30 minutes, we came up to the lower tram station and just as we got there, all the employees were getting into a matatu-like van and they offered us a ride off the mountain. The man who was running the shuttle introduced himself as Lucky. After laughing about his name, we later decided that he probably got a lot of people who are stranded on the mountain find the lower tram and he just calls himself Lucky to humor them. To make a long story short, we made it back safely but never reached the top.

Our fifth and final day in Cape Town was more of a relaxed day, got a few things and biked a little while and took a cab to the tram to make it to the top of the mountain the easy way. The view was amazing and well worth the attempt yesterday.

We didn’t visit Robben Island but it has such an important history that I thought I would include it briefly. Robben Island was used as a prison for political activists who opposed the government mainly during the 1960’s and 70’s. The most popular or well known of the prisoners was Nelson Mandela who was imprisoned in the early 70’s for speaking out against the atrocities of the government. He was sentenced to life on the island, working mainly in a quarry. His wife was only allowed to visit him twice a year and only behind glass, no contact, for the first five years until she too was arrested and sent into solitary confinement for no reason. They questioned her about her relation to activists and claimed that she was involved in various acts against the government. They kept her in solitary confinement for 17 months and finally let her go. During that time, she was allowed to write her husband once a month but receive none back from him. After serving 22 years, Mandela was finally released and shortly thereafter was elected president of South Africa. The tour is given by either an ex-prisoner or warden and includes a view of the cell Mandela stayed in.

That’s all for now, I guess it is a lot of writing but that’s what happened. Catch you all after Brazil.