It's been an eventful few days; late last week June began to notice some odd symptoms; dizzyness when changing position rapidly, mostly mornings, and a real lack of energy. Got out the blood-pressure device (I know it has a name, but I can't remember it, nor spell it when I do); blood pressure is low, 100/60 range, bouncing around, and pulse when resting in the 90s. Make dr. appointment for Monday morning; hoping for definite answer, and begin to think about perhaps not travelling. Symptoms continue over weekend (despite eating badly at a parish barbeque - hamburgers and hot dogs - lots of salt, should sent blood-pressure (BP) through the roof! Went to the installation of Bishop Ralph Spence as Chancellor of Renison University College (yes, the new Act was finally passed in the Legislature), with subsequent reception featuring more salty and spicy snacks -no luck in raising BP.
The visit to the dr. was helpful, but not enlightening. Measured BP every which way and in every position, agreed it was low (but not seriously so, except for a few of the extremes we measured), but also not positional, ie. the dizzyness was something else. June had a bout of this for years while flying, dr. suggested that this never goes away, just goes dormant, and can recur, mildly or seriously. Plus, inner ear fluids are adversely affected by high sodium. So, some sort of inner ear problem, that has recurred; BP may be due to a recent meds change, not initiated by him, which he reversed. All of this will probably go away, in a week, a month, or whenever, and we'll never really know just what caused it all. (This is why we like this dr.; he doesn't pretent to have answers he doesn't, but sometimes we wish he were more of a guru!) Bottom line; June is ok to travel, but probably won't enjoy it much!
We had an event (more about that later - or earlier,if you are reading top down) in Toronto in the early evening, preceded for me by a Senate meeting at Trinity College, so we had lots of time to talk about it on the way into the city. No conclusions so far, but consideration of the bottom line - my recollection (I should have looked at the documentation at home a little more) was that all our bookings - air, car, hotels, were definitely cancellable without penalty, the only thing we would have to swallow (perhaps) were opera tickets in Hamburg and Salzburg - and, who knows? (As it turns out, there was one hotel that had a two week in advance cancellation policy, after which they charge non-recoverable costs, unfortunately one at which we had booked 5 nights. But still, even had we known this at the time, it probably would not have changed the decision.)
Ahh, the decision - in the face of the uncertainty about how June was going to be feeling by this weekend and next week, and beyond, we decided we'd rather be at home, and her feeling perfectly normal, wishing that we had gone to Germany, than to be in Germany, in a hotel (probably the one that won't let us cancel withour penalty), June not feeling so hot, and both of us wishing we had stayed home!
So, I spent today (well, not all of it, some of it was delightfully spent with our younger granddaughters who we were able to have for the day, rather than finishing up packing and all that) undoing all the bookings, and writing e-mails to all concerned, plus some phoning to see just what we would end up paying for a hotel we will not see - or will see another time, depending on how reasonable they are.
We have agreed that we will not let all the trip planning I did on this go to waste; we will simply move it into another time frame - Spring 2009, late April into May, probably. That was the time that Scott and I were in Germany this year, and the weather was wonderful, all was green and blooming, and the days were getting longer. Yes, we will miss the wine harvest this Fall, and we defintely will not miss Oktoberfest in Munich (we avoid the Kitchener-Waterloo Octoberfest; why go for the real thing?), but the compensation for that will be the fresh, white asparagus available everywhere (at seemingly ridiculous prices; eg. about $1 per spear in a restaurant, until you work out just what is involved in getting that one spear to you).
We also agreed that, all going well, we would find a warm and relaxing place to visit late this year, or early next year.
So, keep on checking in here, not just for that, and for next Spring, but I will continue to post reflections on travel, life, and whatever is happening.
Among other things, see the posting above this one, about last night's event in Toronto.
(And then, above that - I still have problems with blogs working bottom-up instead of top-down [latest dates above, earliest dates below] I am planning on satisfying some requests for e-mails that I sent to a select group of people - not so select apparently that they saved them - in the Fall of 2006, from MS Zuiderdam, as we cruised down the West coast from Vancouver, through the Panama Canal, to Miami, over 21 days. [Some people have suggested I should try travel writing; this is as far as it gets!)
Now, I just have to find those e-mails!
(And, I did find them. To read them, expand the "2006" listings in the tree to the left, by clicking on the triangle.)
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