So the morning dawned earlier for me than I’d like when I discovered, to my deep dismay, that I seemed to have caught the same bug as Stephanie is just getting over. This time I’m sure it’s not the altitude which is a problem as we’ve been here now close on a week.

At least this time we had more of a plan.  Sherri, one of Mum’s American friends had been kind enough to send us the info we required to get the situation sorted out.

“Go to an Urgent Care facility” she said, They’re one step down from the ER, but you can see a doctor and get fixed up immediately. It’s usually quicker as well. It seems our wonderful experience at Memorial Hospital where we walked in and were seen literally straight away, is not the norm.

Sherri had also very kindly sent me a list of facilities in Colorado Springs. So we went along to the second one on her list, “Premier Care” on Voyager Boulevard and paid our $114 to see a doctor. Dr Rob gave me a thorough examination, declared that I had a virus and gave me a prescription for the same stuff Stephanie had got plus a different drug instead of the Imodium. That turned out to be on the restricted list. Always good to know I’m getting the hard stuff!

I’m hoping to get over this rather quicker than Stephanie, indeed the medication is controlling the symptoms very well, I just feel knackered! But hopefully this time it won’t disrupt the remaining couple of days here too badly.

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The final must-do of the day after the night before was to try and finish dealing with Direct Line. What a palaver. The previous evening, they were insistent that they would only pay if a) I took Stephanie to hospital and b) I phoned them from the hospital, with the hospital’s fax number and complete contact details for their insurance department so that they could fax release forms over to the hospital us to sign before we left.

Unsurprisingly, no-one in the ER at 3am knew the fax number, and there’s no way the skeleton night staff would have time or capacity to deal with it. You would think that someone at Direct Line might possibly have the half a brain cell required to work that out. But no, they had to be told.

As a compromise, after a lot of too-ing and fro-ing, they agreed that they would email me the documents and I could get them signed and faxed back to them. They were also dubious that they would be able to get a medical report as she was treated as an outpatient – in which case, of course, they would not guarantee to pay.

We couldn’t fax from the hotel, Amy, star customer services manager, invited me into the back office to see if we could work out how to make the fax machine dial internationally. But after about half an hour of pressing all the buttons and resorting to reading the various manuals(!) we had to give up. So we scanned it in and I’ve emailed it. I can only hope it gets there. I specifically asked them to acknowledge receipt but of course there’s been a deafening silence.

I’m grateful my insurance is with someone else, but before I renew I’ll be asking much more detailed questions as I think the ability to call a doctor in what is clearly an emergency is a key requirement.

Note: I know I’m from Yorkshire and therefore tight, but I would have willingly paid myself for a doctor for Stephanie regardless of the cost – if I could have found one! However I misguidedly thought the purpose of travel insurance was to make life slightly easier, not to turn a bad situation into an even more difficult, stressful experience.

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After the night in the emergency room, and a mere 2 hours sleep the next day turned out to be hectic.

I left Stephanie in bed and went down to have some breakfast. Today’s special was biscuits sandwiching fried chicken with country gravy. I have to say I looked at the combination with slight scepticism, but actually it was jolly good.

I’d never had country gravy before so I asked the chef what was in it and he said it was pork (which I would never have guessed). On further investigation later in the day, a lady who was buying it in the supermarket said “you don’t want to know” and on further pressing she told me it was chicken fat thickened with flour. Sounded horrible. Linda then explained that it’s made by cooking your meat in a pan, removing the meat and stirring flour into the remaining fat. Then you add milk and seasoning. So basically it’s just your standard béchamel with the butter replaced by meat fat.

The next task of the day was to get Stephanie’s prescriptions filled and I accomplished this (and gained some more supermarket loyalty points) with my first visit of the day to King Sooper.

Once back, Stephanie had made it out of bed and was hungry. She wasn’t completely overjoyed that I stuck rigidly to the nurse’s instructions and would only let her have water and Powerade post exercise replenishment drink (Gatorade was the alternative allowed drink, but it wasn’t so luridly coloured, so I couldn’t find it on the shelves).

The nurse also said that very weak tea – dunk the bag only 5 or 6 times and drink every 6 hours – cures diarrhoea, and they used to give it to intensive care patients for that very purpose. But Stephanie prefers her tea builder style, so she gave that a miss.

The next item on the agenda was to move rooms. We’d extended the booking here until Friday, otherwise our time on Colorado would have mainly been spent staring at the 4 walls of our hotel room – And worse than that we’d have flown nearly 5000 miles to see Linda for a mere 2 hours!

The new room is great, it’s a disabled room, so everything is slightly bigger for a wheelchair and there are extra rails and the sink is slightly lowered. And it has the most magnificent panoramic view of the Rockies. Amy, the wonderfully helpful customer services manager, shuffled the bookings round so we could have the good room which was lovely of her. The only slight downside is that I’ve discovered that the toilet cistern is leaking onto the floor. No matter, Amy will get it sorted out tomorrow.

Then there was the nightmare of Direct Line to deal with, but that’s a whole other story!

So now after my third trip to the supermarket today the staff have now taken to greeting me personally. I’ve racked up $2.00 extra credit on my American mobile (wonder if it’ll work in England) and $0.12 discount per gallon of petrol.

On nurse Carrie’s advice I have chicken broth and wild rice soup for Stephanie for dinner, but she’s asleep at the moment and there’s no way I’m waking her up if I can avoid it. She has a raging headache now as well – probably lack of food and lack of sleep, so she’s best off asleep. I also have a headache, but am quite enjoying the respite, now she has anti-sickness stuff and anti-cramping medicine I can relax a bit more. As Stephanie would say, I don’t do sick people, so the last few days have been quite stressful for both of us.

I’m looking forward to getting on with the rest of the holiday.

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