From an Alien’s Perspective

We haven’t seen that movie yet.  We actually have no plans of watching it.  But our experience last May 5 until May 14 made us think of seeing it just to compare notes (who’s more unfortunate, them or us).

Anyway, our series of unfortunate events do have some interesting, funny, sad, frustrating twists.

Here are some of those unfortunate events that I can still remember (it took me quite a while to actually put this in writing because of one of the events listed here):

1.  We’re going to the province driving my Dad’s car and then we have to stop 500 meters away from Petron station on SLEX because we did not notice that the car was overheating (maximum level).  We are still trying to cool the car down enough for us to drive towards Petron when a tow truck arrived.  After a few talk though we were able to convince them that we would just drive the car to Petron and we immediately did lest they will tow us, and that means shelling out a couple of thousands (which we do not have right at that moment).

2.  We got to Petron safely… Whheewww… My husband was trying to cool it down with water and after pouring maybe around 10 gallons in the radiator, we decided it’s already safe for us to continue.  I called my brother to inform him what happened to us and he said that we have to run without aircon because it’s the one that’s causing the car to overheat.  OK, hot night… No aircon…  Oh well…

3.  We went to the restrooms first before going.  I came to the car before my husband did so he tossed me the keys.  I’m not really a good catcher so it fell and I just heard it slip between metal railings.  Just from the sound of it I knew…  I’m actually standing in front of a grill-covered dry canal.  I just smiled and said to my husband, without even looking down to check where the keys fell, that it slipped through the grills (which were immovable BTW).  He thought I was joking.  I wished I was… I felt like I’m in a Mr. Bean series.  We were so tired and so shocked for that stupid unfortunate event that we cannot even think of any way to get the keys out…  We can only laugh at ourselves…  So we let the maintenance guys there get the keys for us…

4.  Well, they were able to get the keys for us, so we went on our way… We have to stop twice to cool the car down because it still overheats even if there is no aircon (so the problem is probably more than just the aircon).  We got to my in-laws’ house just before 11PM, only to get another unfortunate news.

5.  My son was burning with fever (40.3 C).  His legs is even hotter than his fever.  We have to rush him to the hospital, which was an hour drive from where we are.  We cannot drive fast lest we overheat again.

6.  He has to be confined, but since the doctors and nurses there said that we can still make it back to Manila, we decided to go back and rush him to Medical City.  We were on the road for almost 6 hours then we have to drive again for another 3 hours or so just so we can get him to the hospital ASAP…

7.  We’re on the road again…  We can’t drive fast lest we overheat again… But overheat we did.  We stopped 4 times just to cool the car down.  The 3rd stop, we found out that our rear wheel was soft (almost flat).  We were in a service area in SLEX - no vulcanizing shop nearby…  On our 4th stop, we overheated again so we have to cool down the car and air the wheel.

8.  We finally got to Medical City after 4 hours…  My son was confined Sunday morning.  I kinda figured he would be confined for at least 2 days so I informed my boss that I will be on leave until Tuesday.

9.  By Tuesday, his fever lowered, but he cannot be discharged yet until he stops having fever for 24 hours straight.  So I told my boss again that I will be on leave until Thursday.  On the otherhand, my son’s legs is starting to have "paltos" all over.

10. By Wednesday, his leg became one big "paltos".  When the doctor saw it, she said that it is like a 3rd degree burn and it needs to be seen by a plastic surgeon.  I can’t believe what I was hearing.  I tried not to cry, but I can’t help it.  I don’t know what happened.  He was improving already, but now another problem comes up and it’s even worse than the first.

11. The plastic surgeon came by Wednesday afternoon and scheduled him for surgery to remove all the dead skin - effectively removing almost all the skin on his leg.  If it was an adult, the procedure would just be at bedside, but since he is just a kid, the pain may not be tolerable so he has to be put to sleep.  He went to the surgery room Thursday morning.  He was able to recover quickly and was returned to the room early afternoon.  The doctor said he would have to go through another "surgery" just to dress the wound.

12. The dressing was scheduled Saturday.  After the procedure, the doctor said that we will still have to wait until Monday before she can decide whether he can go home already.

13. We were still in the hospital Monday morning.  Although he was already discharged, the discharge procedure took long enough for us to miss the chance to vote.

Wow… 13 unfortunate events… How unlucky can you get…

Well at least there was that Mr. Bean event to laugh about.  We actually decided to have coffee at Starbucks in Petron just to laugh about it.  we were jokingly discussing how I can write about it here in my blog while sipping our frapuccino.  But of course I never had the chance to do that until now because of the 9 1/2 days hospital confinement of my son.

His leg is now fully healed.  Thank God.  Hopefully, there would be no more series of unfortunate events.