Meanwhile, a blister pops

Sometime during the week after we landed, Teen's blister popped. This was a blister that had developed on her hip due to the hiking trip she had just undertaken at camp. A five-day hiking trip on the Long Trail in Vermont with a new back-pack frame that rubbed in just the wrong place. This probably happened two days before we picked her up from camp, and just two days after camp we were on an airplane to London. It was DURING the flight that she first complained about the blister, which didn't itch. I didn't think too much about it.

Several days later, the blister erupted and drained and peeled as blisters do. I wasn't concerned about it. We dressed it with antibiotic ointment and a gauze pad. We had a discussion with the local pharmacist on Nugent Terrace about me being allergic to bandage adhesive, so he gave us tape that should have been OK. Except that the areas around where the tape was adhered to teen's hip now became red and inflamed, as did the blistered area itself. We applied more antibiotic goo and put on another guaze pad. The next day the red circle was bigger and uglier. After returning home from CHICAGO (the show, not the city, see below) and seeing that the size of the thing had doubled since the morning, there was no doubt that Teen had an infection cooking. My intuition told me it was staph, but of course here we are in a strange land thousands of miles from Dr. Mitchell, and the thought of flesh-eating bacteria was lodged in my head.

By this time it is 8:30 pm, or 20:30, as they call it here. We "rang" the hospital around the corner as our first step. They do not have an emergency department, but we didn't exactly need that. We needed someone to take a look on Sunday, the middle day of a three-day weekend. The Night Manager at John and Lizzie's (full name--the Hospital of St. John and St. Elizabeth, and it's St. E. of Hungary, NOT St. E., the mother of St. John, how odd is that?) said he thought he knew someone who was around, and that he, the Night Manager, would call the doc and then call us back. Luckily I mentioned that Teen is a student at the American School, for we found out the next day that the nice doctor to whom we had been referred was one of the doctors used frequently by families at the American School. He works with the nurse there, and has many families there in his Family General Practice. Also, he works privately, not for the NHS, so , as we are not (yet) covered by the NHS, he was happy to send us a bill that we can now submit to our US based insurer, who e-mailed us the International Claim form. Note that no money was required of us at the time of the visit!

So, not only did we get Teen's rather nasty-looking condition diagnosed and treated (course of antibiotics and swab with hydrogen peroxide four times a day), but we also got a very good description from the Doc about how the NHS vx. private health care works, and the names of several insurers who provide good coverage for Americans living abroad. He took extra time with us on a Sunday morning of a three-day weekend to talk with us. Thank God for kind people like Dr. D.! (whose office is Just Across the Most Famous Crosswalk in the World)