A second emergency room visit, and the road trip hangs in the balance

It was a terrible and perhaps momentous day for the road trip. For the second time in three days, I had to rush Masayo in our rental car to an emergency room in Utah. This time was completely unrelated to her foot injury from a couple of days ago, was at least as terrifying (for me anyway), and could have big repercussions for the trip itself.

It began in our campsite at Bryce Canyon National Park, which was chilly this morning due to the altitude of the area. We woke up and Masayo was particularly sluggish – it had been a tough few days for her, she’d slept deeply for about ten hours, and was still feeling tired.

Breakfast was our usual for campsites, oatmeal with fruit, cereal bars, and instant coffee. After my rapturous photography expedition among the moonlit hoodoos last night, and the night roughing it in the tent, I was feeling quite chipper myself. I knew Masayo could use some time off, but unfortunately that wasn’t really in the cards: we had the week all planned out, campsites and motels all reserved for the next three National Parks. Lots of driving and moving around for us this week.

Complicating everything was the fact that today is the final day possible to find an Enterprise location and renew the monthly contract for the car. And the nearest one is about two hours away in the opposite direction from tonight’s destination. At the last minute (yesterday), I’ve had to shoehorn into the itinerary a long round trip to a town called Cedar City and get the car taken care of.

And so we packed up and left, and Masayo was soon sleeping in the car as we headed down the two-lane Utahan highways in the morning sun. As we pulled onto a scenic road I’d picked out towards Cedar City, riding along a remote road through Dixie National Forest, I noticed that Masayo’s breathing was rather labored. I knew she was worn out and needed to sleep but her discomfort was worrying. There was nothing I could do though, except keep driving and hoping her condition would improve.

I even turned off the They Might Be Giants and put on some softer Simon And Garfunkel to try to soothe her, though she was unaware of what was happening (and missing the lake scenery which included unexpected patches of snow).

I didn’t realize quite how high the road had reached but after an hour or so as we neared Cedar City we descended down a steep slope that lasted several miles. The altitude wasn’t helping Masayo and she didn’t seem to be doing much better. Still gasping and wincing, she would murmur answers to my questions but was clearly out of it.

In Cedar City I pulled up to the Enterprise and parked, asking Masayo if she felt good enough to come inside. Eyes closed, the word “OK” dripped out of her mouth. I went around to her side of the car, opened the door, and tried to help her out.

She was almost unresponsive.

It immediately became obvious that she couldn’t even stand, and within seconds I’d realized that yet another hospital trip was in order. And here’s me, in a strange new city with no cell service.

Luckily I did have an offline app called Maps.me into which I’d downloaded Utah data earlier. I quickly whipped my phone out, typed in “hospital”, and saw that there was a large one just a mile or so from Enterprise.

As in Panguitch when Masayo’s foot got sliced open, the travel gods were at least providing convenient medical facilities for us.

We got to the hospital, I ran inside to get help, and soon Masayo was laying in a bed hooked up to machines and still having trouble breathing – but stable. A nurse rolled an especially large machine around that looked capable of some high-level and complicated medical procedures but it turned out to just be a computer for payment. Priority number one, as I fretted about Masayo laying in bed dazed behind us and the lady bothered me about which credit card I’d like to use.

I sat in a chair alone except for the patient laying in front of me. Occasionally the machine she was hooked to would start beeping, signifying things like low oxygen level or slow heart rate. I’d frantically run and find a nurse who would lackadaisically assure me not to worry. (Eventually a nurse came in and changed the levels at which the machine would beep.)

The doctor said the blood test would take about an hour so I drove back to Enterprise to get the paperwork taken care of. I burst into the office and explained the situation (excitedly and dementedly, I’m sure) and they told me to go back to the hospital and they’d take care of everything for me.

Back at the emergency room, Masayo was awake and I even got her to laugh a little. The IV was working, and the doctor explained that she was dehydrated and exhausted. Despite the chill in the air in the campsite, Bryce Canyon is at a high altitude and, along with the hiking in the heat of Zion National Park a couple of days ago, it had all been too much for Masayo.

Soon she was feeling well enough to leave, and we had our instructions for her to drink a lot of water and avoid stress for a while.

I found a nice bed and breakfast in Cedar City at the last minute on booking.com, a place that let us check in the early afternoon so Masayo could lay around and take it easy all day.

For the rest of the day I played soft music on my computer and let Masayo sit in bed and do nothing, in our quiet and lovely room on a wide and serene back street in Cedar City. Masayo drank water and tried to eat.

And I pondered the rest of the trip.

Two emergency room visits in three days can make you rethink everything. Can Masayo do any more hiking or camping? Even if she eventually feels up to doing so, should she? How can we continue visiting National Parks if we can’t actually get out of the car and see them?

And how much is she going to improve? Maybe she’ll need to return to Japan early. And then what – me too? Or would I finish out the trip all by myself?

I still had no answers by the end of today. Just grave concerns and an almost total lack of plans for the rest of this road trip. I did manage to cancel the rest of the week (we still had to pay cancellation fees for most of the places I’d booked) and let my friend up in northern Utah know that we would be coming to visit her and convalesce for a few days starting tomorrow.

So the next few days will be almost totally devoid of activity. Masayo has hit her limit and the trip has been demanding too much of her. I’ve been horrified to see her suffering so much, all because of a trip I devised.

I don’t know where Bryce Canyon is going to fit into the narrative of this trip when all is said and done, but I fear it may be something of an apex. What happens in the next month is absolutely up in the air. Only one thing is sure: I don’t want any more trips to any more hospitals.

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