Time for the Padded Room

We visited Durham, North Carolina, recently and ….well, I have started this blog a hundred times now and can’t get around not mentioning that I was in Durham to have surgery at Duke University.  It’s all over now and I am doing fine with only lifting restrictions for the next 3 months—not a good situation with a new grandbaby on the way—and a few minor irritations—allergy to the germicide they use during surgery and irritation from the breathing tube.  But I’m just glad it’s all over. 

I had to explain so that I could tell the funny story of what happened just before they took me in for surgery.  I had been introduced to so many interns and doctors and nurses it was just a whirl of introductions.  At one point, two interns came in and somehow Monty Python came up with the scene about the hospital and the “machine that goes bing!”  Well, we laughed about that and then they left.  And here’s where I thought maybe they were pulling a prank on me.  Not 5 minutes later, a gentlemen approached down the hallway and I see him coming and I swear he looks just like a certain German dictator from the 40s.  Anyway, I don’t have time to say anything to Ray because the person approaches the table at the end of my stretcher and puts down some papers and introduces himself very blandly.  Even up close, he looks even MORE like the dictator, whose name I don’t even like to type. 

So he is the nurse, he says, who will be in the operating room with me & that he was going to review some facts from the paperwork with me.  I was not on any medication yet, I assure you, even though I had asked for some anti-anxiety stuff because it feels so good to relax with that stuff when you’re really worried.  But I hadn’t gotten it yet because the surgeon had to come in first.  So this guy, after he introduced himself, started flipping through the papers he had in his hands and every time he got to a page, he looked at it & scrunched up his eyes and held it away from him then back to him and then gave a satisfied expression then on to the next page.  I swear, he did this with every one of the 10 pages that he had.  NEVER saying a word to me or Ray!  He finished his perusal of the pages then looked up at me with his distinctive tiny mustache and smiled ever so slightly then said okay under his breath and nodded at us and walked away.

He never asked me anything!  It was all I could do not to burst out laughing at his routine.  I didn’t dare look over at Ray for fear I would!  I held it in until he was out of earshot.  I was thinking that maybe the nurses had decided to give me a laugh instead of the good pain shot.

It was the last I ever saw of the little man.  He may have been in the operating room, maybe not.  But it was a relaxing few minutes right before they took me in for surgery. 

And then there was another relaxing “aha” moment after surgery.  The regular recovery room was full when I was done so they took me to the pediatric recovery room and put me into a cubicle that had a very interesting cubicle letter that was a sign to me that all would be okay.  You have no idea how meaningful it was to me.  The whole trip to Europe had been about this particular quest and about getting my mind off this upcoming surgery, and to come out of anesthesia and look up and see that particular letter written in that particular way—what are the odds.  Nobody’s gonna understand what I’m talking about because I’m being so cryptic, but just know that I KNOW how significant it was--especially because on the OTHER side of the sign, the "M" was written in the regular Times New Roman script as usual.

Later that night on TV, I heard that they were doing the movies “War Horse” and “Ghost”-- ON STAGE!  Just imagining this brought on laughter again—this time I had been on meds but they had worn off.  How would they pull this off?  Ghost, maybe, but War Horse?  On the drive home the next day, I saw a sign for Lizard Lick Road that got me to wondering how street names get created.  Hmmmm?  I think there was a Lizard Lick dress shop in Peachtree City at one time.  Just curious. 

So surgery was last Monday and now I have had an amazing week of not much pain and doing very well.  I have to give a shout out to Duke.  Amazing place, amazing care.  I have had 3 phone calls since arriving home—one from my doctor’s office, one from the recovery room, and one from my very own doctor!  He called me HIMSELF to see how I was doing and to tell me that he thought I was going to do very well and feel much better than before.  Unheard of in my book. 

So I guess Ray was jealous of the attention I was getting or wanted to get his costume going for Halloween, but anyway, yesterday morning, Ray was working on the addition and he comes in with his elbow crooked up over his forehead and saying, “Mayday, mayday!”  Oh dear.  Turns out while he was removing a board from his scaffolding using his power drill, the board popped out and hit the drill which hit his forehead putting two long gashes in it.  It looked borderline on whether it needed stitches, so off we go to Urgent Care where the doctor put in 7 stitches to close the gashes—one about 1 inch long, the other two inches.  So now he is more than ready to be Frankenstein for Halloween. 

I was so nervous about all this until I got him there.  When the doctor asked what happened and turned to me, I told him and said that I thought it was borderline as to whether stitches were needed, whereupon he asked me if I was a nurse and I said no but my sister is.  What a duffus I am!  How did that apply?!?  What was I thinking?  I’m gonna chalk it up to nervousness, but my sister got a kick out of the story.

I took a photo of his injuries before the stitches, but looking at it right now, it freaked me out so I'm not gonna post it.  Don't want to do the same to you.

And just in time for Thanksgiving traditions, we’ve had two large turkeys visiting our front yard lately.  They seem to be eating seeds or something from the lawn, but it is so cool to look out and see these huge birds walking about.  Fall has certainly come to the mountains—the trees are showing themselves in gorgeous shades of red and orange and golden brown, and there is a crispness in the morning air.  I love Fall—my favorite season of all.

Turkeys visiting the front yard 

Letter of significance on my recovery room cubicle

 

 

 

Tying Up Loose Ends

Thursday, October 10, 2013

This trip was originally planned to tie up a lot of loose ends—seeing places we missed because of time constraints or their being closed at the time we visited, etc.  And we think we did a great job of doing that.

Now it looks as though there are some loose ends to be tied up here at home.  We have a master suite to finish and a new grandson being born soon.  Lots of doctor dentist stuff to schedule and do.  And now the Mustang has decided that it wants some attention.

We stopped by Waffle House last night for eggs then went to our favorite breakfast place this morning—Dutch Cupboard.  I had been craving my favorite breakfast there for weeks—Belgian Waffle, Scrambled Eggs, and Bacon.  Well, the waffle iron just broke so I had pancakes instead.  Then when we went to leave, the Mustang wouldn’t crank—just kind of coughed a lot.  Ray says there may be water in the fuel from sitting outside while we were gone. 

Lots of washing today, and putting things away, and cleaning up, and mailing to do. 

Photos are of our drizzle departure from Zurich yesterday—at least David Beckham said goodbye.  I told Ray on the plane that a trip to New Zealand is out of the question for me.  I cannot sit still that long.  We were on the plane for 10 hours yesterday.  I watched 4 movies and 4 TV shows and STILL couldn’t stand it.  I have to be able to walk around.  Our plane landed at 2:15 and our plan was to get through security and customs and get our luggage and then get a taxi and be off.  Unfortunately, our plane landed and taxied to Concourse E then we had to get all the way over to the International Concourse F.  We did so and waited for our two pieces of luggage.  One arrived but the other never did.  So the agent told us that it had been sent to Concourse E and that Ray could go retrieve it. 

So I wait past the Customs desks in the hallway and he heads off.  But he is gone for such a long time.  By the time he got to E, they had sent it back to F.  And then he couldn’t get back to F without a Delta escort, so it took some time but we finally got home to Asheville at around 10 last night, totally exhausted. 

 

 

 

Tramming it around Zurich

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Well, I must say that I LOVE Zurich’s Tram system.  It is so logical and works so well with informing you of the next stops and the connections you can make there.  You could go anywhere using them.  I can’t believe that there is a single car here because there really is no need. 

We took the tram into town and had a nice breakfast then walked down to the waterfront.  We’d thought about taking a ferry somewhere—Ray loves anything that will get him on the water—but it was so foggy, we wouldn’t have been able to see anything anyway.  So we walked back up to the cathedrals.  First we saw the gardens of the Fraumunster with the pretty drawings on the walls that look like they are done with watercolors or chalk—I’m not really sure how they do it, but it’s very pretty.  The inside of the church is very simple and had beautiful modern stained glass.  One I especially liked had the Madonna with the prettiest face.  No photography was allowed, so I hope I can find a photo of it online.  I suspected that it was by Chagall and now I find out that I was correct!  It was gorgeous. 

Of all the church spires that pierce Zürich’s skyline, the slender, blue spire of Fraumünster (Minster of Our Lady) is the most graceful. A Benedictine convent was founded on this site in 853 by Emperor Ludwig (Louis the German), the grandson of Charlemagne. Even before that, there was already a convent on the site.

The convent was closed at the Reformation (which was led from the Grossmünster across the river). On November 30, 1524, the last abbess (Katharina von Zimmern) converted to Protestantism and donated the church and abbey to the city of Zürich.   In the following centuries, the Fraumünster was used as a place of worship by Veltliner and Huguenot refugees and later the Russian Orthodox Church. Between 1833 and 1844 it hosted by Catholic and Protestant services.  The Fraumünster was extensively renovated in the 20th century, including the addition of masterful stained glass windows by an 80-year-old Marc Chagall.

Best seen in bright morning light, the windows are 10 meters high and each has its own color theme. Chagall may have used the colors symbolically, with blue and green representing the earth and red and yellow representing the heavens.

 

The window I loved the best was in the center and is the green "Christ" window, the largest of all. It begins with a Tree of Jesse (family tree of Jesus) at the bottom. In medieval art, the tree usually sprouts from Jesse's loins; here he stands next to it. At the top of the tree is the Virgin and Child. A jumble of events from Jesus' life in the middle lead to the magnificent scene at the top, which masterfully combines Crucifixion with Ascension. Christ's arms are outstretched as at the Crucifixion, but there is virtually no trace of the cross and he seems to float effortlessly upwards inside a great bubble.

After we visited the Fraumunster, we crossed the bridge to the Grossmunster. 

 

Zürich's Grossmünster is a 12th-century Romanesque ex-cathedral with a fascinating history of Catholic saints and Protestant preaching. According to legend, the Grossmünster was founded by Charlemagne after his horse stopped over the graves of three early Christian martyrs.  In the 3rd century, Felix and Regula were members of an all-Christian Roman legion that was to be executed en masse in southwest Switzerland. They fled with their servant Exuperantius and got as far as Zürich before being tried and executed in 286 AD.  According to tradition, the governor plunged the three saints into boiling oil and forced them to drink molten lead. The trio still refused to renounce their faith and so were finally beheaded. The nearby Wasserkirche stands on the site of their execution.

Impressively, the martyrs still had enough energy to pick up their heads and climb to the top of a hill, where they dug their own graves and buried themselves. (This impressive feat is more common than you might think - St. Denis in Paris and St. Miniatus in Florence also carried their heads to a hilltop resting place.)

It was on this site that construction of the Grossmünster began in 1090, and most of it was completed by 1230. It was dedicated to the martyrs Felix, Regula, and Exuperantius, the patron saints of Zürich. From the 13th century, images of the saints carrying their heads were used in official seals of the city and on coins (they still appear on the seal of Zürich).

On the saints' feast day (September 11), their relics were carried in procession between the Grossmünster and the Fraumünster, and the two churches vied for possession of the relics. The remains of the martyrs made Zürich the most important pilgrimage site in the area. The relics are now divided between a church in Andermatt and the new Church of St. Felix and Regula in Zürich.

The cathedral reached perhaps even greater prominence through a man who had no use for saints or relics - Huldrych Zwingli (1484-1531), a contemporary of Luther and one of the great leaders of the Reformation.  Preaching for 12 years from Grossmünster's pulpit, Zwingli called for religious freedom, encouraged priests to get married (as he had done), attacked idolatry and denounced the Mass. In 1524, he ordered all altar paintings and church treasures removed from the church.  Under Zwingli, the small town of Zürich became a major religious center that attracted students and theologians from near and far. By 1529, the Swiss cities of Bern, Basel and St. Gallen had all adopted the Reformation.

In 1531, Zwingli was killed during a war between Catholics and Protestants at Kappel. Unlike the founding figures of the cathedral, he left no relics: his body was quartered and then burnt with dung. The site of Zwingli's death is marked with the inscription: "They may kill the body but not the soul." The leadership of the Reformation in Switzerland soon passed to John Calvin in Geneva.

After a fire in 1763, the spires and tops of the Grossmünster's towers were destroyed. They were reconstructed with the Gothic-style sections that can be seen today. The fire also provided an excuse to fully embellish the interior with Baroque decoration, but it was restored to its original Romanesque appearance in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Ray climbed the tower here while I sat quietly and listened to the amazing organ and visited the crypt.  The entrance doors to the church were amazing.

Then we took the Tram #11 south and stayed on while it turned north and went back to our original station.  We bought goodies at the Coop store and spent the rainy afternoon readying for our trip home.  We went to dinner at the little Italian restaurant nearby. 

Up at 5am tomorrow for the 5:55 shuttle to the airport.  Aarrgghh.  But we are so glad to be going home where we can get back into our routine and have scrambled eggs for breakfast and eat at The Dutch Cupboard and Blue Ridge Pizza and Sol y Luna.  I miss home. 

 

Ibis left what I thought was chocolate on my pillow last night.  But when I opened it, it was white, so I thought "white chocolate?", so I bit into it and it turned out to be a minty chalky thing.  Another "soapboat" experience for me. 

 

Silver statue reading Wall Street Journal Europe edition from April 27-28, 2001 near our hotel:

 

 

 

  Any idea what this ad is for?

Busgarage--exactly what it says.  At night the buses get to come inside for a warm night's sleep before going out again the next morning.  How nice.

Trams--the only way to go:

 

At Nelson's English Pub, a Bulldog special--which I would've certainly gone in to order had they been open:

The 3 Martyrs:

Grossmunster towers in the background:

Public toilet with SO many options:

What got him so growly?:

 

 

 

 Our lovely breakfast--wonder how many sugar calories this had?:

What would you like to eat?

 Tram crossing:

 

Ganymed statue that looked like he was about to hit the bird!:

 

Fraumunster:

Fraumunster Cloister:

 

Chagall Stained Glass at Fraumunster--my favorite was the center one with the lovely Madonna face towards the bottom:

A different Chagall:

 

 Grossmunster:

Doors with characters from the Bible:

 

Inside Grossmunster:

The crypt:

 

 Statue of Charlemagne in the crypt:

Some of the stained glass looked like geological slices of precious rocks and stones--agates, that's the word:

 

Photo of the stained glass in the church from Ray's tower climb:

 

 

 

Photo of photo (with glare, sorry) that Ray took of the organ:

 

Video by Ray of view from top of the tower:

 

 

 

 

 

 Waiting for the tram:

 

Sprungli Chocolate Shop where they had window displays showing chocolate as if were a fine jewel:

 

Isn't it nice of these two ladies to hold up this balcony for so many years?:

Train station where we came in:

This is an abandoned train that has turned into a bar: