Mood: Swingy
We took our last semi-major trip (at least, that we have planned) off Kikai before the end of July this past weekend. On Thurs night we boarded the ferry and arrived in Kagoshima on Fri morning. There, we enjoyed the morning and some Starbux coffee, chatted w/ (yet another) French-speaker (whom Aub had noticed was reading a French magazine at the next table over), did a little shopping for some foods not available in Kikai, and then ate lunch at a surprisingly nice, tasty, and pleasant French-style restaurant to celebrate our 5th anniversary of marital bliss.
Later, we boarded the train to Miyakonojo and were picked up by our missionary friend Tom who has lived there for at least 7 years along w/ his wife and 4 kids. They graciously let us sleep in their (Select Comfort sleep number) bed and we had some good conversations about ministry, mission work, gluten-free food (his wife is also Celiac), kids, and such. Next day was spent enjoyably, relaxing and playing w/ their kids. That night I went to the English night at the coffeehouse ministry that adjoins the church building, and we went on a scavenger hunt and then played on the big 40-foot-tall metal-pole-and-rope toy at the playground.
Sunday we had church and that's always a novelty, and it was nice to be there. Sunday night, more enlightening convo.
Then the trouble began. Dum Dum DUMMMMMMM!!!
Or MY trouble. I ate SOMEthing that not only disagreed w/ the current governing regime of my digestive system but rather intended to stage a violent overthrow of said regime. There were many casualties during the hostilities, which lasted approximately 10 hours, and biological weapons were employed. Many potshots were taken at the enemy, and additional reinforcements of water were repulsed vigorously.
Still don't know the identity of the masked assailant, but he has cast a shadow over the last 3 days. Ooof. After an uneasy truce had been established, reconstruction was still painfully slow and I had terrible headaches, backaches, general muscleaches, and otherwise total lack of energy until the next night. I just lay in bed most of the day except for breaks which amounted to 3 hours total. It was great.
Aubrey, in the meantime, went to see the English-speaking OBGYN Dr in the city, which is why we went in the 1st place. She knew it would be quite a wait, and she was right - it was about 2.5 hours. There was clearly a backlog of women waiting to see him and he did not take his time w/ Aubrey but rather rushed thru the appt, didn't give us some of the paperwork we needed, didn't run any blood test at all, and gave us some info that we thought was wrong-headed. Thanks a ton. W/ that, Aub had to leave to catch the train to catch the ferry to take her to Kikai by Tues morning, leaving me at our friends' house. Hated to be separate, but we didn't want her to arrive on the overnight ferry and have to go straight to work the next day.
As it turned out, 24 hours after the breakout of hostilities, I was able to get some sleep overnight and woke up feeling better Tues morning, though far from great. After a prayer meeting at the church and lunch there, I was on the train myself to Kagoshima, where I hung out a bit, didn't get any coffee (I was not quite in the right mood, you see), and made my way to the port area. In no rush, I enjoyed a foot onsen (natural hot spring) and then boarded the ferry, on which I slept hardly at all (well, 1 out of 3 nights ain't bad).
So yeah, here we are. I was pretty bummed when I got to Kikai this morning b/c we're tired of being here and I'm sick and we didn't get the Dr visit like we wanted, etc. But God blessed us today - all of a sudden, an OBGYN from Yakushima island is coming to Kikai every 2 weeks! So we went to him today and between us we know enough to communicate and I got to see our baby on the ultrasound! He was swimming around and flipping. I think we got a live wire on our hands! Oh man, it was so cool... I couldn't contain the smile at seeing our baby on the monitor. The Dr is coming back in 2 wks and we'll complete the tests then. Sweet!
That's really an unexpected blessing. Here we turned down Kikai for a 2nd year for a large part b/c there's no OBGYN here, and I'm sure that's what God wanted. And now, we get one anyway near the end of our stay. That's great and we're thankful.
Our baby's due date is between 23-30 December. Sorry, Baby; didn't mean to set you up for a Christmas birthday. But that's a great time for family and friends to take vacations to visit Japan...
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