Suva Trip (June 15)

Miles and Jasper went to Suva last week to finally get the screw taken out of Miles’ ankle and to have Jasper seen by the dermatologist for the skin rashes he keeps getting. The trip was a huge success, if slightly stressful for Miles. Originally we were thinking they would take the ferry, but they ended up flying instead. Since Jasper is mildly obsessed with airplanes, this turned out to be a great idea. Every time Jasper hears an airplane (several times a day since we live so close to the airport), he stops, gasps, and points in the direction of the plane. Sometimes he also says “waqavuka” or “airplane” (which sound like “kavuka” or “apane”). When we drive by the airport, he gets all excited and tries to stand up to see if there is a plane there. So when we drove down and actually stopped at the airport, he got wide-eyed with excitement. He walked around, checking the place out, first looking for an airplane (it wasn’t there yet), then moving on to the other parts of the airport (there’s not that much to it, it’s tiny). Then he watched the staff weigh the luggage, and then he got weighed too. We waited for a few minutes, then he went to the parking lot to watch their plane land. He watched the people get off while he excitedly pointed and waved. Then he and Miles made their way out to the tiny plane (actually, the 16-seater they took is the big one around here!). Miles reported that the rest of the day was lots of fun, and that Jasper was really excited during takeoff and landing, and that in between, when they were above the cloud cover, Jasper took a nap since there wasn’t anything to see. He also had fun on the taxi ride into Suva (about a 45 minute ride), and being in a new place, staying in a hotel, and eating junk food with daddy (Miles let him pick what he wanted from the grocery store!).

The stress came the second day, the day of the appointments. Since the orthopedist Miles was seeing was at the public hospital, where they don’t do appointments, he had to wait for about 5 hours to be seen. Of course, this was very hard for Jasper, who kept trying to get Miles to leave to go do something fun. Also, since Miles didn’t realize how long it would take, he didn’t bring any food—lunch or snacks—to the hospital (and you can’t get anything there), so both Miles and Jasper got hungry and cranky. Then when they were prepping Miles for surgery, the doctor asked him who was going to take care of his son, and Miles said he wasn’t sure. But this is Fiji, right, so it was no big deal, the nurses took him for the half hour Miles was in the OR. Jasper was not very happy with this, not having had any lunch or a nap, but he calmed down when the nurses propped open the OR door and stood in the doorway watching daddy’s surgery. The doc was a bit surprised to be observed by a toddler in the doorway, but (definitely Fiji), he just shrugged his shoulders and kept working.

Because Miles was at the hospital so long, they actually missed the appointment with the dermatologist at the private hospital (luckily just down the street, not to far away), so the surgeon called and explained what had happened, and the dermatologist said he would see them whenever they got there. So Jasper was seen, and although we didn’t really get much new information, it was nice to know that we had been on the right page. Jasper is basically having an allergic reaction to mosquito bites, which causes them to swell up really bad. The swelling makes it so that when he scratches them (and it’s impossible to get him to stop), they open up and the bacteria on his skin (probably staph) infects them and they turn into sores that don’t heal easily. So we put him on a round of antibiotics to clear the ones he currently has, got a cream to put on bites in the future, some strong antimicrobial soap to try to knock back the staph population, some gentle non-soap cleanser to use after that, and finally some children’s Claritin to give him in the morning to prevent the reactions (because as long as we are here, he will get mosquito bites). Luckily I have found that putting coconut oil on the skin seems to deter the mosquitoes, and both Jasper and I get fewer bites if we’ve had a rub-down (and we smell good too!).

After the stressful day, Miles spent the next morning going from pharmacy to pharmacy trying to find scopolamine patches for me (and a stethoscope, which he found, for me to use at the prenatal clinic, yay!), without luck. As it turns out, John and Barbara had some and we didn’t know it, so I have some of theirs now—just used one today to complete my last certification dive. I’m now fully certified to scuba dive! Anyway, Jasper had another wonderful and exciting flight back to Savusavu, and now he’s as excited as ever about airplanes. Grandpa John took a bunch of pictures and made him a picture book about his trip to the airport, which he LOVES. I think we read it at least 20 times when we were over there the other night. And thankfully, his skin is starting to improve.

More pictures coming soon—I promise!