May Madness

Seeing the locked and sealed shipping container about to depart with our household furnishings brought on my first moments of nostalgia and a few tears. But, as I said to my neighbor when we hugged good-bye, “we won’t have what we had here, but we will have something else that promises to be good.”

Once the house was emptied we made sure that every surface was spotless for the arrival of the new owners, then loaded our two Boston Terriers, along with suitcases, food, computers, everything we would need for our stay in a local long stay hotel. We anticipated a two week lacuna between the time we vacated our house and the date of our departure. There were several matters remaining to be done and now we had the free time to focus on them. First on the agenda was sending the final payment for our house in Anghiari. Through our transfer company, we deposited the balance into the notaio’s account, completing the purchase and paying all fees due. With that done, I forwarded the receipts and a Certificate of Habitability to the Italian consulate in Miami to verify our purchase and further substantiate proof of housing in Italy. When I got no response, I sent it all again, but still received no acknowledgement. Nevertheless, I hoped that the information had been seen, and incorporated into our application.

I also had to complete required paperwork for taking the dogs overseas. There were forms to be filled out, some by myself and some by our local veterinarian, then sent to the USDA for validation. Because we were becoming increasingly uncertain that our passports would arrive in time for a May 26th departure, I knew that this paperwork might have to be repeated, but the passports could also come any day and we needed to be entirely prepared to depart when they arrived, possibly just before our scheduled flight.

Another “duty” was a colonoscopy recommended by my gastroenterologist. Because I had not fully recovered from a stubborn bout of bronchitis, the procedure had been delayed until May 23rd, just a few days before our scheduled flight to Italy. Though it might be difficult, we hoped to leave for New York in the afternoon following my release, or latest the next morning, arriving in New York in time for our flight. It would mean cutting short our visit with Terry’s daughter, but we had no choice and she understood the dilemma . We had yet to sell our car, so made an appointment with a dealer in New York to turn it in there, a mere twenty-four hours before we were to fly to Italy. A frantic schedule to be sure, but we were adapting to the strange new rhythms of our lives.

In the meantime we found that Grappelli would need another surgery. I had discovered a small mass close to the scar from her previous operation. I wasn’t certain whether it was simply part of the scar tissue or a new tumor, but the veterinarian saw that it was pigmented, indicating that it was live tissue, and agreed with my decision to have it removed. Because the mass was so small, the incision was only about two inches long and our stalwart little Grappelli hardly noticed it. In time we got the good news that this tumor was benign so her prospects seemed greatly improved. We could hope that removing the mast cell tumor along with the course of chemotherapy were enough to eliminate the cancer altogether.

Anticipating that our passports might not arrive in time to fly on the 26th, I called the airline to ask whether we would qualify for a refund. I explained that our passports were being held by the Italian consulate, and that, without them, we would not be able to fly overseas. “No, said the representative, we wouldn’t qualify. Now we were learning that purchasing tickets before our passports were returned was an ill-conceived and expensive, gamble.

The date for my colonoscopy arrived, still with no sign of our passports, so we could be pretty certain that there would be no drive to New York that day or the next. Instead, along with the morning procedure, it was moving day from our hotel to the home of a friend, who had offered her house for as long as we needed it. Everything was packed again, and Terry and I would move it all to our new lodging in the afternoon. Though not what we had planned or wished to happen, we were resigned to delaying our departure for a while longer and looked forward to being in a house instead of a hotel.

I woke from the anesthetic with a plastic tube in my mouth and a nurse ordering me to, “breathe, breathe.” And I was doing my best to breathe, though it was a struggle until the medication coming through the tube started to take effect. Having had a similar experience during a previous surgery, I assumed that, as before, I had had a reaction to the anesthetic. When the doctor stopped by to review what had happened, he told me that he had to abort the procedure when I went into stridor, caused by a laryngospasm during anesthesia. He had begun to remove a polyp, but couldn’t complete the excision, so I would have to return for another colonoscopy in the near future, information that was definitely groan worthy given the unpleasant prep and risk of another reaction to the anesthetic. Because the doctor thought the breathing problem might indicate pneumonia, I spent the rest of the day in the hospital being evaluated while Terry assumed the entire job of moving everything from the hotel to our friend’s house. Although a second colonoscopy was hardly welcome news, the situation would actually qualify us for a full refund of our airline tickets because now a medical emergency had prevented us from flying.

The next month, spent in our friend’s home, was a pleasant one, punctuated only by the second colonoscopy. But as the end of June approached, Terry and I decided we had imposed on the hospitality of our generous friend long enough and it was time to return to our long stay hotel–with attendant packing and unpacking. As it turned out, we would split our remaining time between two hotels because the July Fourth holiday was booked at our hotel of choice. Though we continued to look for Express mail envelopes holding our passports, we had given up any real hope that the passports and visas would be returned before the 90th day. Now we were looking at the ninth of July as our end date, a full three months after our application had been submitted. The consulate had warned us they had the right to hold our passports for ninety days and it seemed they were determined to stretch the hold as far as the legal limit would allow.

In spite of the ongoing craziness of our lives, we finally had a date we could plan on. I let our realtor in Anghiari know that we would have to delay the closing, unfortunately causing inconvenience to her and to the seller who decided to re-schedule his moving plans. But now I could book tickets for July 12, this time leaving from Miami. By that time our passports would have arrived and we could fly to Italy.