"A Perfect Ending to a F**ked-up Day" ***[UPDATED with photos]***

Bonus points if you can tell me what movie the quote that is the title comes from.

I thought the quote does a nice job of summing up some of what happened today, our first in Tokyo, in particular the second half of the day - the part where we were in Japan.

All was well until riding the shuttle bus from the airport to our hotel.  Narita Airport is about 2 hours away from the center of Tokyo, where our accomodations are at.  John was tired and taking a nap on my lap.  He was squirming around a bit, trying to get comfortable.  Before long, he woke up and was coughing with a raspy, seal-like barking sound.

He'd had a bit of a cough the previous two days, but nothing that should cause us to cancel our travel plans, right?

Well, as of this writing, John has been admitted to a hospital here in Tokyo for observation.  His coughing became so severe on the bus that we were a hair's breadth away from stopping it in the middle of traffic and getting an ambulance.  It was as if he was choking, but not due to any sort of object obstructing his throat.  The obstruction was his throat itself, irritated from the raspy coughing.

He was able to calm down enough and smooth out his very labored breathing enough to allow us to get to our intended destination.  Once we were at the hotel, we began burning up the phone lines to get treatment arranged by the company that administers our medical insurance.  Once this was done (it took the better part of an hour to coordinate things and locate a suitably close treatment facility), we took him straight to the emergency room.  That was at about 5:30 PM local time.

The doctors drew blood, gave John nebulization treatments to help him breathe, and eventually prescribed an oral steroid to try to deal with the inflammation of his throat.  By the time all the medical procedures and waiting for a relatively solid diagnosis was done, it was nearly midnight.

Most likely what he's got is a case of viral croup that will resolve in a day or two (hopefully).  We'll have more information in the morning after the hospital has a chance to run more tests.  The disturbing part to us was the sudden onset of severe symptoms, i.e. being barely able to breathe.  One person I spoke to tonight said that it could have been triggered by the colder-than-we-are-used-to, dry Tokyo air.

This is a good example of something that would be relatively easy to deal with when on familiar turf, but that becomes exponentially harder when in a completely new environment in which you understand very little of the local language.  Indeed, one of the things I almost immediately remarked upon to Barb after we got to Narita was how I felt extremely limited by how little Japanese I recall (my most recent lessons in Japanese ended in late 2004).  The comparison is with Chinese, of course - I know a fair amount of Chinese and feel pretty comfortable moving about society in Taiwan and doing the things I need to do on a daily basis, using Chinese, but I can barely manage "hello" and "thank you" in Japanese.  Barb thought this was pretty funny, noting that now I know what it feels like to be her  in Taiwan.  Touche!

More updates will follow as the situation develops.  Pray for John!

GJS