The Georges in Peru

Today Mary Beth had a good day.  She was able to sit up more than she has in weeks.  This bodes well for getting through airport lines.  Today was packing day before our drive to Lima tomorrow.  We gave the house sitter a tour and bought our face shield, which are required to fly on Friday.  We made our food for our trip tomorrow as we won't be stopping at any restaurants.  Some other Canadians made the trip last Thursday and told us that it took their driver only 13 hours, but they thought he was driving a bit fast, so we'll plan on 15 hours.  We hope to leave before 6am.   And more good news, Aetna says they'll reimburse our commercial airline flights for Mary Beth!

9:32 pm

Steve Carnazzo, an old friend from Omaha, found a condo for us to stay in while we are in Phoenix.  The owners are letting us stay there for free!  Praise God for his generous people!

After a long day of chasing dead ends, Allen was finally able to book us a repatriation flight to the US of A for July 24th.  Thankfully, spouses of American citizens are allowed! He got the very last fully-reclining seat on the plane for me which is exactly what I needed.  This is my first time traveling business class and might be my last, so best enjoy it!  Aetna, the insurance company, wrote us an e-mail right after he booked to tell us that they are unwilling to help us out on this venture, so we are extremely thankful we found another option.  I must admit that this progress has me extremely excited and nervous all at the same time.  You can pray I'll get well enough to sit up during transitions and for our 15-hour trip to Lima (we'll have to drive since the airport in Arequipa is still closed).  This afternoon, Allen ingeniously came up with a travel arrangement for me!

I find it interesting which things have become scarce in Peru.  Like everywhere, toilet paper flew off the shelve at the start of the pandemic.  There are actually studies to explain why that happens!  Thankfully, TP has reappeared in Peruvian stores with no more limits on buying it.  But other things that you might not expect to be scarce have also become hard to find.  I asked at about 10 stores over the last week if anyone had mustard or ketchup and finally found both today.  (I got my share of 'Mustard?!   Seriously?  NO!  Nor do we have any European white truffles!' looks from store owners) Borrowing a Cuban tactic used to give the impression that stores are full of goods, the local supermarkets fill all the space that varieties of ketchup and mustard used to fill with what they have on hand.  In this case, Mayonnaise!  

This afternoon, we had an appointment for a phone call with Meagan, the nurse for the thoracic surgeon at Mayo.  Everytime Meagan called, we could hear her but she couldn't hear us.  Finally I ended up calling the Mayo switchboard and got transferred to Meagan's department and we could hear each other!   She went over all of the risks of the surgery, pain control, pre-op,  surgery and post-op timeline, and recovery time.  She said that normally there was a 4-5 month waiting list to get the operation!  But with the COVID pandemic she wasn't sure what we can expect.  We should know more tomorrow.

And now for something completely different:

Our oven of 20 years quit two days before the lockdown started.  Since I have replaced several parts on it over the years and it still leaked a bit of gas at times, we decided it was finally time to get a new one.  We are so glad it was then, as we have had to cook all of our meals at home since March 16th.   Our old oven has been sitting in our back yard since then since we can't take it to the junk yard.  

Before lunch, I was riding my bike to the outdoor vegetable market and saw a pickup with a bunch of junk in the back, including an oven!  "Hey!" I yelled, but the driver didn't hear me, so I turned around and chased him until he slowed down for a speed bump.  "You want to buy an old oven?"  "Let's see it!"  "Follow me!"

He followed me to our house, loaded up the oven and even paid me $3 for it!  If only Mary Beth could sit at the dinner table and look out over the back yard and see that it is gone!

Not much to report.  Thankfully, Mary Beth is feeling better today.  She's not so dizzy and not so achy. Only her head ached today.  

So what does she do all day?  Since she can only be upright for about 30 seconds at a time before her blood pressure bottoms out, she mostly lies down.  She moves from the bed to the couch (where she eats all of her meals) and even to a camping mat on the floor in the living room throughout the day.  She listens to sermons online and talks to her parents and siblings on the phone.  She reads about her condition online and watches YouTube videos about the surgery.  And she's counting down the days until her video appointment with the surgeon!  Pray our internet and electricity don't go out on Friday!