Love In the Time of Measles
How a romantic getaway to Croatia became a holiday nightmare.
“Before I leave is it possible to get my husband’s passport back?” I asked the two nurses in front of me. I was still holding out hope.
“We will give it back when he is ready to leave,” said one of the nurses in broken English.
Translation: Time to book a hotel in Split, a city we were never meant to visit, because this quarantine might be awhile.
***
It was our second day in Dubrovnik, Croatia, the “pearl of the Adriatic” and we decided to venture outside the Old City to a nearby island called Lokrum. For you Game of Thrones fans, it’s where they filmed Dorn. Lokrum is only 10 minutes by boat. It was meant to be a day of jumping in the sea, diving into a dead sea lake and sunbathing in medieval gardens. But after our first swim, something was wrong. Coming out of the water my 29-year-old husband, Max, was flushed, short of breath and could barely make it two minutes without needing to sit down. We bought some water and he downed it like a dying hyena — there went $5, I thought (Croatia’s expensive now).
“It’s so hot. I think I’m dehydrated,” he said as he reached for more water.
He could barely move. It must be too much sun we thought. After all, it was HOT. “Drink more water”, I told him. “Take a breather. Are you ready? Okay, let’s try again.”
We continued the day, but things seemingly got worse. We hiked to the dead sea lake, we jumped in the saltwater, we stopped for lunch. At lunch, Max’s face was bright red. He couldn’t stop sweating. It must be the heat. We headed back to the boat dock so I could swim one last time and he could rest in the shade. A mistake for sure. When I came back, he had sweat through his shirt, his body was on fire. Concern began to set in. Maybe it’s not the sun.
We caught the next boat and went back to our AC-filled Old City apartment. Max needed to lie down. What we didn’t know at the time was he had been suffering from one of many fevers that would plague him over the next few days. He drank water, I gave him some Vitamin C and Ibeoprofun. His symptoms worsened. He sweat through the bedsheets but was freezing cold. He was shaking. We had no warm clothes considering it’s Croatia in August. So we wrapped him in socks, summer scarfs, and the one sweatshirt I had brought for the plane. He couldn’t stop shivering. We used cold compresses, but they turned to hot towels within minutes. We Googled his symptoms, clearly, he had a fever. Since the apartment was tiny (i.e. it fit a bed), there was nowhere for me to go but out, while he tried to break it. I left for 90 minutes and came back with green smoothies and water.
Luckily, by the time I returned his fever had broken, he was no longer shaking and described his new state of being as “euphoric”. Errr, okay.
“Maybe this is it,” he said. “I feel great now”. Great, I thought. Max never gets sick and when he does he usually has a fever for a day and boom, he’s ready to go again. Perhaps his immune system had saved him like always.
We went out to get dinner. He drank orange juice while I sipped on a delicious dry Croatian white wine, made from Posip grapes. We ordered $6 water (did I mention Croatia is expensive now). He downed it. He was still sweating. By the end of dinner, he was ready to go home. Exhausted. “I don’t feel well,” he said.
We had to wake up at 5 am to catch a ferry to Hvar, island, aka the Ibiza of Croatia. We were about to spend 4.5 days there for some much-needed R&R.
Neither of us slept that night. Around 2 am, Max was having another full-blown fever. He was shaking and sweating all over again. Shit. I thought. The fever died down, but then came back. Around 5 am, I turned on the lights “I’m so sorry, but we’ve got to pack and go.”
I was about to drag my feverish husband through the cobblestone streets of the Old City (no Ubers or Taxis can come into the car-less Old Town) while suffering from a 102-degree fever, only to shove him onto a miserable three-hour ferry.
What he needed were sleep and water. What I gave him was five hours of traveling, while dragging 40-pound suitcases around. On the ferry, he couldn’t stop sweating. I had brought rose-water charcoal wipes with me (we’re from Los Angeles if you didn’t know) which he kept using to cool off. It wasn’t working. About an hour and a half into the ferry Max turned to me and said: “I think I need to go to the hospital”. “I think so too,” I replied. I had already Googled the Hvar Emergency Room and knew exactly where it was.
***
This is a good time to mention that two days prior to leaving for Croatia Max had been to Urgent Care in Los Angeles for a hand infection. He had pricked his hand with a safety pin attached a TJ Maxx shirt he bought for the trip (darn you bargain shopping!). His hand swelled up, like a spider bite gone wrong, and a red rash emerged. He was diagnosed with Cellulitis, a bacterial skin infection, which can be life-threatening if left untreated. Since he was about to travel abroad the Urgent Care doctor prescribed him two antibiotics “to attack it aggressively.” But he gave us very explicit instructions for our trip.
- If the rash spreads while in Croatia, go to the emergency room.
- If he develops fevers, go to the emergency room.
Both could mean the infection is spreading. By day two in Croatia, when the fevers first began, his hand was looking a little better — the rash was NOT spreading. But the fevers, they were a problem.
***
We landed in Hvar, a beautiful Adriatic-island, in a bit of a panic. We needed to rent a car before they were all gone. We needed to get to the hospital. We needed to save my husband from whatever bacteria was clearly trying to kill him. After several frantic “Do you have automatics?” followed by “hahaha, no”, we began to worry there were no cars for us. It was the high season and as stupid Americans, we can’t drive stick! Eventually, a blue Cabriolet convertible emerged to save the day. We could have it for two days, but no more. As it turns out, that wouldn’t be a problem.
We drove to our AirBNB, a gorgeous sea-side apartment 10 minutes from Hvar town. It was a dream rental that played only a short cameo in our nightmare and would become the site of one of the worst nights of my life.
Remember, Max is still in and out of fevers. We’re on no sleep and we’ve got to get to an island hospital. I’ve been to many hospitals abroad (my mother broke her leg in Paris; I had extreme food poisoning in China; I got bronchitis in Ireland, and now Max was suffering from God knows what in Croatia). Come to think of it, I should write a hospital review guide for foreigners.
When we got to Hvar hospital everything was, not surprisingly, in Croatian. Before going on the trip I spent three months learning Croatian despite everyone telling me that “everyone speaks English.” Which is true — but hospitals are always a different ball game. I know, I’m an expert. They’re not designed for tourists. They’re for locals.
We accidentally entered the “hospital” from the back. It looked like a 1950’s horror-asylum movie set. Decaying furniture, dimly lit halls, once-white curtains that were now yellow. There was a family in the hallway, one man with a broken leg, another man holding his arm. They, about 10 of them, were just standing there, doing nothing. Talking to no one. We searched for a “reception” area but no one was there. We waited. I read the signs, the opening times, there should be someone here I thought.
Eventually, a woman came back and asked what we needed. I explained everything to her. “He needs an IV,” I said. “We’ll see” she responded. “Wait there.”
We kept waiting. Then another patient told us to go see the doctor. “It’s your turn, you just walk back there.” We were confused by this but decided to follow her instructions because what else were we going to do.
The doctor was young and didn’t seem too interested in our story. I tried to emphasize the hand infection, the medication he was on (we brought the pills with us) and the onset of fevers. We also showed him two red dots that had formed on Max’s arm. They were tiny but noticeable to us. He didn’t take his temperature. He didn’t check his blood pressure. All he did was take a wooden tongue depressor and look at his throat.
“The fevers are not related to the hand,” he said confidently. “This is a third-party virus, maybe just too much sun.”
“What about the dots?” I asked.
“It’s nothing,” he said. “Go rest, enjoy your vacation.”
Oh hell no. I didn’t want to be “that person” but my husband had been dying for two days straight at this point, going in and out of high-grade fevers. This was not “too much sun.”
“Our doctor in the US gave us explicit instructions that if he got fevers we were to go to the hospital,” I said, as he was trying to shoo us away. “We are at the hospital, that’s why we came here. Something is wrong.”
The doctor visibly rolled his eyes at me, “we can give him a blood test.” He checked his watch, “if they are still here.”
Max took the blood test, two hours later it came back negative. Negative for what? I don’t know because it was in Croatian. Apparently, there was “no infection in the blood.”
We went home. Max’s fevers got worse. His face became red, the color of a sun-baked beet.
All afternoon, all night. In and out of fevers. Sweating, shaking, no improvement. We were utterly helpless.
We didn’t sleep well. By 6:30 am Max told me things felt worse. I looked at him, the whites of his eye were streaked red. His face looked swollen, his eyes sunken. The red had spread to his neck. I looked closer yet.
“Oh my God,” I said. “Look at your arm.”
His entire arm was covered in a bright red rash. Thousands of little dots had emerged overnight. The more we inspected his body the more dots we found. From his chest to his toes, his body was covered in them. The Urgent Care doctor’s warning flashed in my head “if the rash spreads, go to the emergency room.”
We jumped in the Cabriolet convertible and rushed back to the hospital. The drive was gorgeous. But the beauty of the sun rising over the crisp blue sea was juxtaposed against the harrowing tale my husband was enduring. Instead of enjoying the view, he wore my white hat to block the sun, his greatest enemy, from burning his face. We didn’t have time to put the top-up.
It was almost 7 am and allegedly it’s a 24-hour hospital. When we got there, it was a ghost town. We wandered the dimly lit halls shouting “hello” and “oprostite” (“excuse me”) only to be met with silence. I read a few signs, “Working Hours 7 am to 2 pm.” We waited.
Another patient came in, also looking for help and weirdly holding his hand. We all sat in the empty hospital, no help to be found.
7 am came and went. Finally, a noise, the “ambulance” workers who mainly take care of drunken tourists who fall off yachts (as I imagine them to) and club-goers who took too much Adderall arrived.
We once again explained everything. The hand, the fevers, and now the rash. At least this time they took his blood pressure, but still no temperature. You would think someone complaining of fevers for three days would get a thermometer stuck in their ass at some point, but not on Hvar.
The female paramedic looked concerned. This rash was not a good sign. “We can’t help you here,” she said. “We can’t even do an IV antibiotic. You need to get on a speedboat and go to Split.”
Split is a much bigger city, on the mainland of Croatia. “You need to go to the Infectious Disease unit there,” she added. What. The. F**k.
We didn’t let that sink in until much later — but she gave us very explicit instructions, down to the exact wing of the hospital we needed to get to. The words “Infectious Disease” disappeared into the background because neither of us was paying attention. All we heard was “get on a speed boat and go to Split.”
That felt scary for some reason.
“When should we go?” I asked. Both paramedics looked at each other, “Now, you need to go right now.”
I don’t know if you’ve ever been told to jump on a fast-boat and get to Split ASAP, but it feels life-threatening. Especially when one of you has been knee-deep in fevers for days and now has a thousand red dots covering their body. Whatever was “spreading” was moving rapidly.
We grabbed a single bag with the essentials (passports, money, sunscreen, toothbrush) but nothing else. Looking back that was a mistake. We should have just packed everything.
Another ferry from hell. Max’s anxiety was in full swing — rightfully so. The poor guy hadn’t slept in days and, from reading the paramedic’s body language, needed to be concerned about his current state of health. I didn’t know what to expect when we got to Split, but as soon as we disembarked I typed “infectious disease unit” into Uber and sure enough, there it was.
“Is this where you want to go?”The Uber driver asked.
“Yes, we are going to the hospital.”
“Er, okay. What’s wrong with you?” He inquired. It was the first of many inquiries, from many Uber drivers. Apparently, they don’t like to pick people up and or take people to the Infectious Disease Hospital. Gee, I wonder why? He did give us some advice though, “If they don’t take you seriously, push back,” he said.
I went in prepared for battle. Little did I know, that would not be our problem.
***
We arrived at the Infectious Disease Unit in Split. We rang the buzzer and the woman who answered looked at us incredulously. Once again, we explained everything.
A nurse took us to a private room. A female doctor came in. We explained everything again — 5th time’s the charm right. She examined Max and asked a lot of questions. I kept interjecting information — I was pushing back — but she seemed to be taking him very seriously. She nicely kept telling me “I know what Cellulitis is.” She asked more questions. She had him remove his shirt to look at the rash. She had us tell her an EXACT timeline of the symptoms again.
After about 15 to 20 minutes she asked: “Has he been vaccinated for Morbilia?”
That word was foreign to me. “Some tourists come here and get Morbilia” she added. Oh God, what is that? Is that flesh-eating virus? Is it bad? We didn’t know we needed shots for Croatia!
“We swam in a saltwater lake” I blurted out.
“No, no, you would not get it from a lake,” she said.
I used precious phone data to Google Morbilia. Nothing came up.
I called Max’s parents, no answer. I called my own mom, “Do we do Morbilia vaccines in the U.S.?”
“Mortadella?”
“No, mom, Morbilia”
“Rubella?”
“No! Morbilia.” I was frantic. Phone calls on international plans are expensive.
I sent my mother on a mission to get a hold of Max’s parents since I couldn’t waste more minutes and the hospital had no wi-fi. It ended with her driving to their house around 3 am U.S. time to knock on their door and ask about a vaccine because their son was in an Infectious Disease hospital in a Split. Not a great wake-up call.
It turns out, Morbilia is Croatian for measles.
“Yes, he was vaccinated for measles.” The text came through from Max’s mom around 20 minutes later.
The doctor was relieved but said that 3% of people who are vaccinated still get measles. It’s just less severe. In fact, we didn’t know this at the time, but an Israeli woman who contracted measles recently died following a flight from New York, despite being vaccinated.
You can thank all the anti-vaxxers for this wonderful gem of a situation. Since they’ve destroyed the power of herd-vaccination measles is making a comeback. In fact, Los Angeles had an outbreak in July. The Croatian doctors asked if there were any recent outbreaks in California and we had to say “yes” while cursing Jenny McCarthy in our heads.
By this time the doctor was convinced, it’s measles. It’s basically a textbook case. The symptoms matched 100%. The intense fevers, followed by a red face and red neck, followed by a full-body outbreak. They brought in an older, grouchier, male doctor to consult. He man-handled Max, spoke only Croatian, and seemed to be yelling “Yes, it’s Measles, get him to quarantine, NOW!”
Max’s passport had been taken at this point and he was moved into an actual hospital room on the other side of the wing. He was officially a patient. The room was drab, four walls, cement floors. No TV. A bathroom that looked like it came from the movie Saw I, all that was missing were the shackles. But they were there, metaphorically anyway.
His door was closed, no one was allowed to exit the room into the hospital wing. A sign was placed on the outside that said “Morbilia”. He was officially quarantined.
No one gave us any information. They put us in the room and left. Croatian-only nurses came in and out to take blood and pee samples. But that was it. We asked for water, they pointed to the sink. Later, they brought brown tea.
Minutes, maybe an hour passed and another doctor came in, this time wearing a mask. Should I have a mask? I thought.
This woman was a measles specialist who worked with partner organizations (which I assumed meant places like the World Health Organization). Her biggest concern was containment. I had to show her our itineraries, flight numbers, AirBnB host’s contact information, ferry routes, the whole nine yards. It was now on Croatia to not let this spread.
She asked if he had been vaccinated, I said “yes.”
“Both times? It’s two vaccines.”
“Yes,” I said.
“I need you to show me proof.” It was not a statement so much as a demand. Max’s mom dug up his vaccine records from the 90s (hold onto to those cards folks, you never know when you’ll be quarantined in a foreign country) and texted them. The measles doctor wrote down the information from the cards.
As important as containment is — and it’s important — I was fearful because Max was not being treated in any way. He was not given medication for the fevers, not administered an IV, not even given water. Other, darker thoughts loomed in my head as well “What if it’s not measles? What if it’s something else and no one’s looking? What if he’s dying and no one is paying attention because all they see is Morbilia taped to the door?”
We spent the entire day locked in that room. It was a Thursday. I was told he would be there until Tuesday. That’s how long they needed to get the measles test back from Zagreb (the capital of Croatia). Also, if he did have measles he would be there anyway, on quarantine. Max asked if I would go get him a book, a kniga, in Croatian.
I went to the closest mall (actually the closest mall was closed due to the fact that it was some national holiday because, of course, it was). While there I bought him sweatpants, a sweatshirt, and a book — The English Assassin by Daniel Silva. It was that or Harry Potter for the English section and Max read all the Harry Potter books.
By the time I got back, it was 5 pm. It was time to make some real decisions.
The doctors were convinced it was measles. They told me to book a hotel room in Split for a few days, at least until Monday. Unfortunately, all of our luggage was on the island Hvar and our AirBnB would run out before Monday. It dawned on me, I couldn’t stay in Split that night. I had to leave, I had to gather all of our belongings and come back to Split the next day.
Alone.
Leaving was harder than I thought. I couldn’t stop crying. I didn’t want to leave my husband lying in a hospital I didn’t have 100% confidence in. I imagined returning the next day to be told: “We’re so sorry, he died overnight.” The thought was unbearable. I also didn’t want to go back to a party island, pack up and drag two giant suitcases plus carry-ons onto a ferry.
It seems silly, but I focused on the hardship of the journey, because focusing on the hardship of the situation was too much. Crying about a lost vacation and thousands of dollars down the drain was easier than acknowledging that I could lose my favorite person in the world, the one person I could not, will not, live without in the blink of an eye.
His temperature before I left was just over 103 degrees.
Four days of 103 fevers is not good for anyone.
We asked the nurses for an IV, they said no. We asked for medication, they gave him Ibeoprofun. We asked if he should take his antibiotics for his hand and they said: “What are those?” Really? Does no one communicate? There was no chart or update? No one knew he was on medication? I really can’t leave, I thought, they’re going to kill him.
But I did.
Leaving was interesting. You’re not allowed to just leave the room. Instead, you have to walk out a back door that leads to a veranda of sorts. Walk around the back of the hospital and re-enter from there if you need to. It’s so the “measles virus can fall off of you”, or so I was screamed at when I tried to leave his room the first time through the front. A mistake I did not make again.
This is when I asked for the passport and was denied. Not a good sign. We couldn’t ditch this place even if we wanted to.
***
I’ll spare you the details of the boat ride, the drunken party-goers and the vomiting that followed as the rough waters took over. I’ll even spare you when the taxi driver, seeing I was crying asked if I wanted a “sedative” he was carrying in his pocket. “No thank you,” I said, now more terrified than before. I didn’t realize that sedative would have come in handy later.
The moment I entered our beautiful sea-side apartment I broke down crying. It was a violent cry, a top-five cry of all time. I think I cried harder than when my dad died. It felt like Max was dying. I was gathering his things like a pre-widow charging toward her own fate. His shirts, his watch, it was all too much.
I called my mom and I couldn’t breathe. I wished I had the sedative.
We talked for close to an hour. I was a mess. I was exhausted. I was scared. I was overwhelmed by the journey at hand. How had my Adriatic dream turned into a nightmare? How could my Max be at risk? He never gets sick. If he died, I felt like I would die too.
I looked out over the balcony. The moon was so full and so bright it mimicked a silver and navy sunset as it shone on the ripples of the water. I wanted to enjoy it, but I couldn’t. I wondered if Max could see the same moon from his empty hospital room. The only thing that brought me peace was knowing that Max was strong and he would not let this defeat him.
I called his parents next. His dad was already looking at plane tickets to Croatia. I told them to wait because we still didn’t have test results. Maybe it’s not measles. I explained everything, again, I then sent pictures of measles to his mom via text to show them what Max looked like.
Then his mom remembered something. Max had looked like that before, when he was one year old he had taken a specific antibiotic and broken out into a rash. He was allergic to it. It’s a rash that mimics measles. The antibiotic was sulfa-based. “What antibiotics is he taking for his hand?” she asked me.
The bottles! They were in Split with Max. There was no way to call him or the hospital. In the airport, at LAX, I remembered looking at one of the bottles and commenting that the name “sounded like bacteria.” I googled Cellulitis medications and found it. Bactrim. A sulfa-based antibiotic.
“Oh my god, he’s allergic to this and he’s been taking it for seven days. He’s taking it now! They’re not looking for an allergic reaction, he’s going UNTREATED.” I was officially freaking out.
I could not let my husband die from some allergic reaction to an antibiotic he didn’t know he was allergic to because doctors thought he had measles and he bought a stupid shirt at TJ MAXX!!!!!
I called his measles doctor — it was the only phone number I had — and it was midnight. She was not happy. The call dropped six times. She eventually said, “call the hospital”. Like, not shit. But I didn’t have a number and one was not listed on Google. She spit out a few numbers … 556–111. Seriously, that’s what she gave me. Is that even a number? It took about 30 dials to get a combination of that number to work on my cell phone.
Eventually, it did, but the hospital operator hung up on me, “No English” she said. I called again and again. “No English” is the response I kept getting or call “this number” instead. So, I switched to Croatian “I need help, I need help” I shouted in Croatian, on my umpteenth try, now half-crying half-yelling. “My husband … is … hospital … Infecktologia … with Morbilia … Room tri (3)… I need to talk … to doctor to …” shit what’s the word for message?
She transferred me. The next person hung up.
“No!!!!” I sobbed into my sheet of paper with numbers written in $35 Chanel eye-liner. I had no pen. I had left it with Max to record his temperature. So many phone numbers, so little help.
I tried again. Finally, I got through. “We will get the message to his doctors,” they told me. I was sobbing at this point, “How is he?” I asked. “We don’t know, we’re not there, it’s on the other side. Goodbye.”
That was it. Radio silence until I could see him again. The next 12 hours would be long, to say the least.
***
I couldn’t catch the 6 am ferry because it was sold out (party-goers from the vomit ship the night before would no doubt be on it), so I was scheduled for a boat at 10 am.
My Airbnb host, Darka, called me at 8:30 am and said she wanted to help me with the luggage and give me a ride to the port. This was the best news of my life. She was incredible and to this day I owe her my utmost gratitude. She walked me all the way to the ferry so I didn’t have to carry two cases across medieval cobblestones all by myself.
I made it to Split, silent tears cried under RayBans, but made it. I dropped my luggage at my temporary hotel and booked it to the hospital. This is when Ubers began canceling on me. The biggest obstacle to getting back and forth between the “Infectious Disease” hospital and real-life was scared Uber drivers. Literally. I received messages like “That hospital scares me” and “you’re not infected are you?” I began begging people to pick me up in the notes section adding “I’m not sick” and “I’ll tip!”
Sometimes I couldn’t type as fast as they could cancel. On one occasion, I was canceled on nine times in a row. The one driver who finally picked me up said his daughter had been in the same hospital so he wasn’t scared to go there and it was his job to get people where they need to be. He almost made me cry. I tipped him a lot.
Walking into the hospital toward Max was a feeling like no other. I can’t imagine how military spouses go so long with no word from their loved ones. I couldn’t make it one night. I walked briskly down the hall saying “dobra jutra” to everyone I passed. Room 12, 11, 10 … I needed to get to Room 3. There it was. I burst in, faster than the measles virus itself. “Dobar dan” I shouted in my best Croatian accent. He thought I was a nurse, and then I saw him. Alive. I ran over to him and we both cried. Sobbing over that feeling of elation you only get when the one you love is back in your arms again.
“Did they give the doctors my message?”
“What message?”
“That you’re allergic to Bactrim.”
“No .. I am?!” Max said surprised.
All that for nothing, of course.
Then, he added, “Actually, a new doctor told me to stop taking that yesterday though because he said it’s highly allergic and they gave me an IV to help rehydrate me.” His face still red and eyes still bloodshot he continued, “I am feeling a little better”.
We told the new doctor the new information, he ordered a steroid to be placed in Max’s IV and his butt (which Max hated). A few hours later and the rash was disappearing. His fevers, for the first time in 5 days did not come back.
“When can we leave?” We asked.
“Well,” said the doctor. “With measles, we have to be sure and we still don’t have the test from Zagreb. It might not be in until Monday because they don’t work on weekends.” Damnnnnn you European work-life balance!
Max could not be stuck for three more days in this 1950s hospital from hell (no offense, Split, but we wanted out). But he was technically still in quarantine and we didn’t possess his passport.
We waited again. I left the hospital for a few hours to tour Split while Max slept, but it was not much fun. I walked through winding streets, passed sidewalk cafes and ocean views, but nothing brought me joy. Max should be with me. This should be our time. But we were plagued by a measles diagnosis that was looking to be a false alarm. Now we were stuck in Split. I had canceled all our hotel reservations for Hvar and Mljet (the next island we were headed to). It was the high season, we had the hotel in Split for two nights and then no accommodations after that. Our flight was going to leave from Dubrovnik which was 3.5 hours away. What were we going to do? We still didn’t know when we could leave, so there was no booking to be made.
I went back to the hotel room, sat down and said to myself “Max is coming home today. Max is coming home today. Max is coming home today.” Like conjuring Bloody Mary I was attempting to conjure some good luck.
I went back to the hospital around 5 pm after several Uber cancellations. Seriously, Split get it together.
When I walked in Max was somber, “The test won’t be in until Monday, it’s too late.” My heart dropped. “Just kidding, I am getting discharged!”
“Wait, really?!” I screamed and jumped up and down.
The evening nurse brought dinner but we excitedly said we didn’t need it. She didn’t understand so I said in Croatian, “We are leaving to hotel.”
“Tonight, no?”
“Yes, tonight,” I said, happily, knowing that we were over the hill and on the way to recovery at last. Plus, my Croatian was really killing it.
An hour or so later — because Croatian time — I hunted down a doctor (a new one again) to get the discharge going. “Yes, yes, we’re working on it.” An hour after that, we were free. Our bank accounts were a bit smaller — the hospital bill was only $300 — but the double-booked hotel nights, cancellation fees, and lost travel incurred costs upward of $1,000. But it didn’t matter. Losing the vacation didn’t matter. What mattered was my husband was alive. He was coming home and he did not have measles.
Max was sick for another two days and told not to go in the sun for a couple of days (in sunny Croatia). But the rash eventually disappeared, his energy returned and we were able to make it to Mljet, a tiny island with a national park close to Dubrovnik for four days. Out of our two-week trip, we salvaged roughly four days. We were exhausted — Max especially — both physically and emotionally. Max was a trooper. He was living through 103-degree fevers and still kept a smile on this face. More importantly, despite the bad luck, we had each other.
When I asked if he could feel me reaching out to him the night I was stuck on Hvar and he was in the hospital alone he said he looked out the window and saw the moon and wondered if I saw it too. “It was so big and beautiful, it was incredible. I thought of you.”
I did see it, I told him. We both did. Because we love each other to the moon and back. Always.
You can hear Max’s experience being quarantined on Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=couEaAvY1oA
