The SEMA Trip that Wasn't

The one trip husband truly looks forward to, for SEMA.  The one time he REALLY looks forward to me dragging him to Vegas, since he cares not one bit about gambling.  To his credit, he does enjoy watching me enjoy it.  And generally likes the sights, people watching, food, shows, OK.  

Plan: fly out Sunday, SEMA starts Tuesday, six nights, home Saturday. 

The Thursday before, he comes down with the not-flu--sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, stuffy head, fever so you [can't] rest...medicine...remember that ad, Nyquil?  Saturday afternoon, after mowing grass and other heavy jobs he comes in with labored breathing plus heart flipping and flopping.  Take him to ER.  By the time gets to ER everything is almost all better.  ER docs say they love Vegas and wish they could go with us.  Blood, EKG, chest X-ray "all fine, you'll be fine to travel", they say.  Like when you take your ailing vehicle into the shop and it doesn't do what it was doing before.   But I'm happy.  We can go.  Yeah.

Surely he will be fine by Tuesday, right? plus our Vegas traveler friend coming with us.  Long story short we buck up and go.  After arriving he is pretty miserable Sunday, and Monday.  Tuesday he makes it around APEX, the session associated with SEMA, automobile aftermarket trade show stuff.  A few hours and he is done, and beyond that pretty much staying in the hotel room.   3 nights Bellagio, then 3 nights Wynn.  Yes, friend and I are Strip snobs.  Hate me, but please be kind and get over it.

I actually have a decent trip gambling-wise.  Everything bass ackwards though.  Good hits on slots, just fair on VP, lousy blackjack luck.  No jackpots but good hits, come home with most of the budget.  Otherwise I'm running back and forth tending to sick husband.  Trying this and that OTC stuff brought from home plus whatever he sees advertised on TV that might cure him (not) and I go running to Walgreens.  Friend is mostly losing, and pouting about it, until the last morning when she hits a couple grand (not all at once), then hits $1700 at the airport!  She is one of those with a horseshoe up you-know-where.  Wins all the time.  We hate her...not really.

Friend's Host gets us access into the Wynn Tower Suites lounge where husband spends most of those three days drinking Baileys and coffee, Jack and Coke, you know those remedies that actually work.  The lounge servers or whatever they call them, adore him for some reason, pamper him all day, even concoct some ginger honey something hot tea with "a splash" of something they swear will cure him.  Like 'the recipe' on the Waltons.  He laps it up, the attention especially.  It allowed me to feel better while I gambled, of course.  LOL.

We make it home and I get sicker than I've been in years.   Same stuff, better now after Urgent Care visit except my right ear still hasn't opened up after the plane landed.  Friend gets some of it too.   Stupid...we should have cancelled.

Well, we have a trip planned for Christmas week.  Hopefully we will all be better and I can post something interesting.

But ya know...I still say...a bad day in Vegas is better than a good day at the office!  LOL.

First of all, I'd like to congratulate you on your incredible luck. Not that you did OK gambling-wise. Rather, that your hubby didn't go *klunk*.

Following is some unsolicited advice, which you can take or leave, as you please:

1. Your hubby's pattern of feeling terrible--getting a little bit better--relapsing suggests a viral infection (rather than bacterial). The body fights off the initial assault and the virus--or a mutated version of it--goes back on the attack. It takes repeated salvos from your immune system--which is actually fairly poorly adapted to deal with viruses--to get rid of it.

2. I don't need to tell you how dumb it was for him to crawl out of bed and do yard work, but when he went into distress and you had to take him to the ER--that was a sign of real danger. That the ER team said he was good to go was not that reassuring. The folks in the ER are not the first team--or even the second team. Also, their job is to get people ambulatory and back out the front door. Telling them that you were going to Vegas probably didn't help. IMHO, given his symptoms, they should have admitted him overnight for observation. That would have been the prudent thing to do.

3. I would lay at least even money that what your hubby experienced was pericardial inflammation, or pericarditis. His infection was probably resurging and his exertions made him that much more vulnerable. And yes, it can go away in a few hours. But to return to your car analogy, that doesn't mean that whatever caused the problem wasn't still there. (For what it's worth, I'm not a doctor, but I do have some medical background and was an EMT a couple of decades ago.)

4. Flying while he was still contagious meant he "shared" his infection with everyone aboard the plane, thanks to the plane's recirculating air system--which cannot scrub out viruses. You and your friend found out just how contagious it was. I'd lay dollars to donuts that someone on the plane caught it, too.

5. Since you're coming back to Vegas for Christmas anyway, maybe you should have just canceled, gotten whatever refunds you could, and then used the money saved to make your upcoming trip really whiz-bang. Vegas is fun. Vegas while sick is no fun (was going by yourself a viable option?). Also, Vegas while dead is definitely no fun, though it doesn't stop you from being a headline performer.

6. The hot tea with honey and ginger thing actually works. Add a little lemon.

Anyway, I hope both of you are all better, at least in time for Turkey Day.

Wow....everyone's worse nightmare...getting sick before a trip.

I am such a cheapskate I never buy refundable airfare so if I cancel I would just lose my trip. I would probably have just muscled through as you guys did but as Kevin points out that may not have been the best idea.

I had to laugh at the "lounge ladies" pampering him and him lapping it up. 

Here's hoping your December trip turns out better!

Just to fill up this thread I will reply to Dr. Lewis.   Thanks, Kevin.   I pretty well know most of your points.  As you so thorougly and gleefully pointed out, it was a totally selfish thing on my part to proceed with the trip.  I could have cancelled us, or gone ahead and left him home (didn't want to do that).  Friend would have gone on anyway.  He didn't even care that much about missing SEMA, which certainly was an indicator of his level of feeling bad.  I, on the other hand, had made a lot of arrangements to free MYSELF up for this week.  I know about viral vs bacterial (46 years an RN).   I doubt we were the only pre- or mid- cold/cough folks on that plane, and we have both left home well and come home sick from other peoples' bugs. 

I haven't posted many TRs in the past and enjoy others', so I thought I would spark a few laughs with this one.  Just a little thing...humanity...humility...that's me.  I'm a very imperfect person, unlike yourself.   OK, that's ugly, not my usual.  Your points are all well taken, Kev.

Thanks, Blonde4ever (me too, I frost my mousy brown mop).  Especially since nothing much of interest to anybody (except Kevin...LOL).   I do hope the next TR will reflect health, and maybe wealth?  Well, health at least and something more interesting than our aches and pains.  Thanks for reading.

Oh, PS, one interesting experience at Wynn.  Husband's eyeglass frame came apart, that little pin between the lens part and the ear piece.  Wynn has an amazing frames place down the newer promenade (other wowie amazing stores also).  The nicest man spent a good amount of time not only putting them back together but making them fit better, and did the same for mine too.  (He is probably home in bed right now with a cold.)   I had a great time looking at all their designer frames, saw nothing under $700 (just for the frames).  I suppose they also fill prescriptions, but we were the only customers in the place the whole time.   Back home here it is pretty much horn rims if you need glasses....just kidding, we have some decent optical shops but I doubt anything like this.  Probably wouldn't get out of there under $1500 for a pair of Rx glasses at the low end, but fun to look around.  I was tempted to ask to try some on...they were all under lock and key...but I knew it would be futile if I fell in love with a pair...sob, sniff.

How kind of him to help you guys!

"saw nothing under $700"

Being sick on your vacation just takes the wind out of my sails.Coughing and feeling misurable just hanging out in my hotel room with the TV.            I catch "something" during or at the end of my trip about 1/2 of the time.

No way to protect yourself breathing the plane's bad air.Not even a mask.Your own oxygen supply?

  There are nasties on most everything that you touch.Hand wipes are always in my pocket and my hands get washed at least 5 times a day.The casino chips,door handles and the elevator and machine buttons-sheesh!

Air lines seat pockets-don't touch!

  How do the air line crews avoid getting sick?Do they have a higher incedents of having/catching a "cold"?

I see hand sanitizer station all over Las Vegas.Those small hand packets are still around.

  We live in a germ-filled world and my immune system ain't what it used to be.

I'll never be an Adrian Monk,but I'm more germophobic lately.

May you never contract a virus on your vacation!

Dave, I can tell you that two friends--one, a former flight attendant, and the other, a former navigator, have told me that they caught all sorts of bugs, routinely, inevitably. They said that the recently developed over-the-counter stuff that you're supposed to take at the first sign of an infection worked--sometimes. Otherwise, they just gritted their teeth. They flew while sick all the time.

I suppose people feel they have to be somewhere/go somewhere no matter what, but I wonder--what if coming to work, riding in a plane, coming to school, etc. etc. while sick met with the same social approbation as, say, smoking? What if it was considered an act of rudeness to join a close gathering of people while sneezing and coughing? Just sayin'.

When I went off to college, I was sick more often than I had been in the prior ten years. The lecture halls in fall and winter sounded like a 19th century tuberculosis ward. Everybody "shared" their microbes/viruses. And not breathing wasn't really an option.

Winter is coming!

Thanks Candy for a super TR, sorry about the sickness, your husband was a good troop & needs plenty of applause,lookinf forward to your next TR.

The TSA or the WHO can screen sick people."No,you cannot fly today,you are infected."

  It won't be long B-4 smoking will be against the law. Kalifornia will do it first.

I know how you are about smokers,Kevin.

  If the flight crew is sick and they have to work,they do. Thanks for that.

So many bugs can get you.Any public place has viruses in the air and on most surfaces.