Day 12 & 13 – Not in the Schedule of Planned Activities

Dana woke up feeling really under the weather and told me she just wanted to rest and for me to take advantage and go sightsee. I knew that feeling. When leaving Paris I felt exactly the same way. I had zero motivation except for staying in bed. I could totally empathize and I felt a little guilty going out and about on my own with her locked up in a motel room but I knew she’d be sleeping and hopefully recovering.

With that I went back into Rome and headed for the Museo Nazionale so I could check out their Roman coin collection. It took me forever and a day to find the place. I walked and walked and asked cop after cop where it was. The website said that it was on the same metro stop as the Colosseum which, of course, I knew exactly how to get to from the day before. Eventually I gave up and flagged a taxi. Even the taxi driver had trouble remembering where it was. I was walking in a completely different area of town. Easily 2 or 3 miles from where the frikkin building was and most definitely nowhere near the Colosseum.

I was kinda miffed by the time I got there so I sped through my business, took pics and made a beeline back to the motel to check on Dana. The whole outing had taken me about four hours and by the time I got back she was awake after having managed to sleep only a couple of hours. What was worse, she was feeling worse with a new ear ache symptom. She wasn’t in the mood for dinner or much anything else and I really wasn’t hungry that much myself.

By nightfall she started bleeding from the ear. We headed to the hospital right then and there. Thank God for our trusty GPS because it came in truly handy; the hospital was close distance-wise but one had to take a lot of curvy back roads. I feel bad for anyone caught in this need and having to rely on signs. When we got to the emergency room it was just like in the states: wait for hours and hours until we finally got called in at like 1 in the morning only to have the doctor tell us he was a general practitioner and that we should come back in the morning to see the ear-throat specialist. For all the wait all she was given was a pain killer and an antibiotic.

We went back to the motel where I got some sleep and Dana got very little. Her ear bled off and on throughout the night so that by the time we woke up it was colored red. Quite distressing a sight really.

Back to the hospital where, mercifully, the wait was only about an hour or so before said specialist took a look and confirmed otitis then put her on antibiotics, ear drops and more pain meds. Dana was to leave tomorrow and I worried that the 11 hour flight would not play nice with her condition but the doc said it should be ok.

And with that we went straight back to the motel by way of a supermarket to pick up some sandwich ingredients. No sightseeing.

Day 13