During all the planning and anticipation of this trip, we naturally imagined all of the amazing, beautiful, wonderful places we would see and how much we would enjoy all the quality time together as a family. This trip was so much more than that vision. It was a journey for our family. It was gritty, it was hard, it was beautiful, and it was sometimes overwhelming. I had a few moments along the way when I wanted to pack it all in but those moments were always short-lived. For the most part, we dreaded returning to our regular lives when the trip was all over. I felt more alive than I can remember and against all of my natural tendencies, I got to experience what it is like to live in the moment. Not all the incessant planning and worrying always clogging my mind. We experienced the highest highs and the lowest lows, sometimes all in the same day. Emotions often ran high. We had moments when we wanted nothing more than to get away from the kids. Not just get away but run away. We also had many moments where we thought our hearts would burst looking at the amazing creatures our children were becoming.
About 6 months into our trip we had one of these overwhelming moments where the fun of the adventure seemed to come crashing down around us. It was undoubtedly the most memorable low, and looking back now, one of the most important high points of our journey. We learned a lesson about the goodness of people and the importance of helping people when they are in need.
I had just returned to Brett and the kids in Bangkok from a business meeting in Hawaii. It was a Wednesday in early December and I was so excited to get back to everyone. I had been away for a week after we had spent every minute together for the last six months. It was shockingly hard to leave them and so amazing to re-unite. We had a full day of fun on that first day back. An old colleague of mine that had left Vancouver five years earlier to sail around the world with his family was in Bangkok for one night, and it just happened to be the exact same night that I got back to Bangkok before we left for Chiang Mai. As if that wasn’t lucky enough, in the huge city of Bangkok that can take hours to navigate from one side to the other, their hotel was within walking distance from our apartment.
We met up for lunch with Shaun and Sherrie in the lobby of their hotel and peppered them with questions about what it was like living on a sailboat and about all the amazing places they had seen in five years of traveling. Their two daughters, now 16 and 10, had been sailing for a big portion of their young lives. It was really interesting getting their perspectives on the lifestyle as well. They were remarkably well adjusted and mature, no doubt that this experience would shape their young lives in many wonderful and positive ways.
It was very inspiring to hear the interesting stories of the places they visited and the people they met along the way. The idea of sailing as a means of long-term travel had already come up several times on our trip. Usually after a couple of glasses of wine while sitting in a beautiful marina in places like Croatia or Greece. We always looked longingly at families sitting around relaxing on their sailboats. In our often-exhausting world of unpacking, re-packing, booking apartments, and navigating transit and taxis to find our apartments at each stop, sailing seemed like a dream to us. In our eyes it was like traveling around in your apartment. Never having to pack up and move, just move along when the time feels right with all of your things already put away in their rightful places. Now there was the little detail that neither of us had actually sailed or spent any meaningful time on a sailboat, but that didn’t seem like an overly important detail when we were daydreaming about our future sailing life.
That same day after meeting up with Shaun and Sherrie, we had dinner with another set of friends that we had met in Bangkok, a family that we had connected with through a mutual friend in Portland. Much like our sailing friends, Chantal and Patrick and their family are living an adventurous life. Patrick’s job has taken them from Canada to Switzerland, and now to Thailand. It amazed me how they do it all with 4 children under 5 and two large dogs! How do they seem so relaxed? They seemed superhuman to me.
It was our last night in Bangkok and a great opportunity to meet up with Chantal and Patrick and their family to enjoy a meal and say our good-byes. We had so few opportunities to connect with friends on this trip. This rare social day with such inspiring families was so nice. We went home tired but happy.
The following day we packed up our apartment and headed to the airport to fly to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. It’s a place I’ve always wanted to go. We had been told by so many people that we should skip Bangkok and go straight to Chiang Mai. We enjoyed Bangkok so much that we were so excited to visit somewhere even better! We were all in high spirits getting off the plane, excited to explore a new place after being based in Bangkok for the last 6 weeks.
We found our way to the apartment that we rented for a week. It was a beautiful apartment with more than enough space for us all. We had stayed at so many Airbnb’s by this point that we knew that despite the online description and reviews, the actual apartment condition can be a surprise. In this case, it was a pleasant surprise. It was a large, clean apartment with a Japanese theme, sliding paned doors entering into a clean and spacious living room. As had become the ritual, the kids ran into the apartment ahead of us to stake out their claims to their beds. Thankfully this apartment had enough beds for all of us and two bathrooms, a rare luxury that we had really come to appreciate.
Despite our high spirits, things started to go south about an hour after we got to our apartment. We were all hungry and we walked up to a nearby street with lots of street food to get something for dinner. Brett quickly picked something but I wanted to wander for a bit and see what all the options were. There were so many different vendors, different smells, and many foods some of which we didn’t even recognize. I was mesmerized. Brett just wanted to get the food and get back to the apartment. He became increasingly impatient and we had a rare argument on the side of the street while the kids looked on with looks somewhere between fear and embarrassment. Brett had mentioned a few times that he had a stomachache, but I didn’t think much of it. Between his Colitis and my Crohn’s, stomachaches are just a part of normal life for us.
I still remember that first dinner. We got pad thai, the best that we had on our trip so far. The kids got some fried chicken and a few small pancakes, some filled with chocolate, some with strawberry jelly. When we got back to the apartment Brett complained that his side was hurting but still continued to eat his dinner. We all enjoyed that meal so much and felt thankful to be settled in such a nice place in Chiang Mai. I was happy as well calculating that we had spent a grand sum of $8 for our dinner, complete with fruits and vegetables.
After dinner, things changed quickly. Just after eating at about 7pm, Brett suddenly started screaming out in pain. At this point it was only about 3 hours after our plane had touched down in Chiang Mai. The kids were scared and I knew that the pain must be really severe and real because Brett knew the kids were scared but he couldn’t mask the pain. After a few minutes, it was clear that the pain wasn’t subsiding and that he needed a doctor. He was completely immobilized with pain and didn’t think he could make it downstairs to a taxi. I had not prepared myself for something like this and had no plan.
By this point, the kids were wailing. They were so scared to see their dad in this much pain. “Mom, mom, what’s wrong with Daddy?”, “Is he ok?”, “Mama I’m so scared”. They had never seen him hurt like this before. I can still clearly see and hear the room at that moment in time. Brett screaming, and the kids intermittently screaming, sobbing, and begging me to tell them that Daddy was ok. I was trying to re-assure them while at the same time trying to figure out what to do. I had no idea how to get Brett to a doctor. How do I call an ambulance? In a panic, I told the kids to stay with Dad and I ran downstairs on my own looking for someone to help me get an ambulance. I approached a couple of people outside our building but they didn’t speak any English and could not help. I probably scared them, this crazy white lady yelling things they didn’t understand. I kept running. I ran out to the street and tried to flag down cars. There was no traffic on our street. I ran back to the reception at the apartment building. There was no one there. I ran back out to the street to look for people to approach for help. I was in panic mode and not thinking clearly enough. All the while I was so worried about how Brett and the kids were doing.
Finally, I found the presence of mind to stop and send a message to our Airbnb host who quickly jumped into action and called an ambulance on our behalf. I ran back upstairs and got a bag packed with some snacks, water bottles, and ipads for the kids and we somehow managed to get Brett down the stairs to the front of the building.
While we were waiting, the kids were crying in fear. Brett was nauseous and clearly overcome with pain. At some point he started vomiting. I had to take a garbage bag out of a nearby garbage can and held it up for Brett to vomit in. I was on the border of having a panic attack and I saw some signs that Ronan was verging on a panic attack as well. I kept thinking where is the ambulance? Is there really one on the way?
A man who lived in the building who had just come home, saw the scene and immediately came over to help. He was so kind and tried to get all of us to calm down. After what I’m guessing was about 20 minutes, the ambulance finally arrived. The scene was pretty dramatic. Flashing ambulance lights. Siren. Scared and crying kids. Me holding a bag up as Brett vomited while they wheeled him onto the ambulance. The paramedics were not interested in helping with that task.
The ambulance ride will be etched into my memory. The boys rode up front with the driver. Riley and I rode in the back with Brett and the paramedics who spoke little to no English. I didn’t know what hospital we were going to nor did I know anything about the quality of care we would receive. I had all manner of crazy thoughts running through my head. I was consumed with fear that Brett was in serious danger, and behind all those worries I was also thinking about how our health insurance that we had for the last 6 months of our trip had just expired a few days prior. I knew it was expiring and it had been on my mental list to renew but I had forgotten with all the other things going on. I had become complacent since we hadn’t needed to use the insurance for the first six months. I remember thinking that maybe I need to figure out how to get him back to Bangkok to get better care if this was serious. I was mentally tallying up how much money I could liquidate if needed to get him the appropriate help. I was also trying to keep a brave face so the kids stayed calm.
I suffer from anxiety in certain situations. The only way I can get it under control is to take a pause and consciously take deep breaths and consider my next move. I did not do this. From the moment this episode started, I was in panic mode. I ran around randomly and ineffectively. I wasted time running around outside looking for someone without stopping to think of my best course of action. I was running from person to person, place to place all while thinking I should stop and clear my head to think. Thankfully I managed to do that long enough to reach out to the only person that we had any connection to in Chiang Mai, our Airbnb host who ultimately got us the help we needed.
We got to the hospital ER and they quickly got an IV started and gave Brett some pain meds. He was wheeled in and out of the room to get different tests – x-rays, ultrasound, CT scan, etc. We did not have any better luck communicating with the doctors and nurses at the hospital than we did with the paramedics. The fear was crippling and for a lot of the time, I was on my own with the kids trying to hold it together. The situation seemed even more scary since we did not know a single person in Chiang Mai who we could call for help or support. Thankfully Brett was well medicated by that point and was able to drift in and out of sleep.
At the hospital, as the night wore on and we were alone in the waiting room while Brett was off for a test, Ronan came over, sat next to me, put his arm around my shoulder and said ‘Mom, don’t worry everything is going to be fine.’ Who was this amazing boy? How had our little Ronan become so mature? He was trying to look after his mama.
While we continued to wait in the ER, I reached out to my new friend Chantal in Bangkok (that we had dinner with only 24 hours before!) to tell her what was going on. She mobilized the expat community and found a friend-of-a-friend who lives in Chiang Mai that ended up calling me to check in on how I was doing. She re-assured me that we were at the best private hospital in Chiang Mai and the care would be world class. She offered us any support she could provide. I can’t even explain how much this meant to me. I had been thinking that I should have a contingency plan in place if I needed someone to take the kids. It was so re-assuring to have a local resource and so amazing that a complete stranger would voluntarily get involved to try to help our family in this way.
Sometime after midnight we discovered that it was kidney stones. Now I wouldn’t wish kidney stones on my worst enemy but there was a wave of relief knowing what the issue was and that it was not a life-and-death situation. He had several large kidney stones in various stages of working their way through his system, but all were too large to pass on their own without some intervention. So, Brett was admitted to the hospital and at about 2am, I went looking for a taxi to get back to our apartment with the kids. After waiting for about 30 minutes with no luck finding a taxi, one of the hospital workers who noticed our situation offered to drive us home. Amazing. I was wary of accepting a ride from a stranger but we were all exhausted and there didn’t seem to be an option. Our communication was limited (he didn’t speak any English) but I went with my intuition that told me that he was a thoughtful and kind man who genuinely wanted to help… and he really was. He drove us home and even waited in the driveway to make sure we got into the building safely.
The doctors ultimately landed on an ultrasonic shock wave treatment to try to break up the stones. The urologist told us that it may take several treatments over the course of a month. Our plans to move on to Hanoi as planned for New Years disappeared. We took it in stride. We were so happy that Brett was going to be ok and there were worse places in the world to be stuck.
I can’t remember how many treatments Brett had before we all realized that it wasn’t working. We had spent a big portion of the remainder of our travel budget on the treatment since we had no insurance and it was all out of pocket. Now they were talking possible surgical intervention. We were definitely not in a position to afford surgery and the idea of having surgery somewhere that we don’t speak the language and couldn’t communicate effectively with the doctors was scary. I’m not sure which one of us came up with the plan but we eventually decided that if Brett felt stable enough, he should fly back to the US to get treatment. We had maintained our medical insurance in the US and thanks to my battle with pneumonia earlier in the year before we left on the trip, we had already met our annual family deductible. We contacted a friend of ours that works in the ER in the hospital near our house in Portland and they offered to help usher Brett through the system at that end.
It was a difficult decision to let Brett go on his own. We made the decision together. We knew that if we decided to go back as a family, it was likely that would be the end of our adventure. It would cost about $10,000 for return tickets for all of us. So, on December 23rd, we kissed Brett goodbye as he left on a long journey from Chiang Mai to Portland having stops in Seoul and Seattle.
He was in a great deal of pain and there was a non-trivial risk that the stones would dislodge mid-flight. He was very brave and took the risk. I’m sure that trip was agonizingly long for Brett because it seemed like an eternity for me. At one point he called me from the airport in Seoul to tell me that the pain had started ramping up again and he wasn’t sure whether he should continue. This was my biggest nightmare. If Brett would get stuck at one of his stopovers with no friends or family. We got off the phone and I wasn’t sure what he would do. About half an hour later I got a text from Brett telling me that he decided to get on the plane.
I couldn’t sleep that night I was so worried about Brett. Thankfully the kids were settled and happy with the knowledge that Daddy was going to get better and would return to us as soon as he could. While he was traveling, I tried to create a bit of a Christmas celebration in our apartment in Chiang Mai. We were already prepared with Christmas presents before all this happened. When we were in Bangkok, Brett and I had left the kids with Chantal and Patrick and spent an afternoon shopping. We left a big parcel with all the presents at their place for a few days. On that last night in Bangkok when we said bye to them, Chantal asked us a ‘favour’ (in front of the kids). “Hey guys” she said, “Could you do me a huge favour? We have some friends in Chiang Mai that we need to get this package to. Would you guys be able to take it to them since you’re headed to Chiang Mai?”. “Absolutely” we said in unison ‘”We would be happy to help!”, with sly winks and nudges between all the grown-ups. So there I was in Chiang Mai wrapping presents late on Christmas eve, the kids asleep in their beds, and Brett in transit somewhere over the Pacific, trying to will his kidney stones to stay put for a few more hours. It will be Christmas none of us will soon forget.
Brett landed in Portland on Christmas eve. Thanks to our amazing friend in the ER and a great medical team, Brett had surgery that same night that he arrived. They successfully blasted and removed 5 large kidney stones (>1 cm) and several smaller ones. He would need to stay in Portland for at least a week to recover and get his stents removed so we had at least another week in Chiang Mai without Brett. Thankfully we could relax knowing that he was safe and recovering. The kids and I did some exploring around Chiang Mai. We got the opportunity to meet Fletcher, the wonderful friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend that had talked to me that first night in the emergency. She and her small daughters took us on a beautiful hike up to a temple on a hill overlooking Chiang Mai. Another day we headed out to a farm and restaurant where we had a wonderful lunch while the kids could played out the fields and barns. Fletcher was another inspiring influence on our journey. She is an American who moved around the world to build a life with her Thai husband. They were living in Chiang Mai, close to the small village where her husband had grown up.
Another day I booked a trip to the ‘sticky waterfalls’. The Bua Thong waterfalls, as they are officially known, is a beautiful multi-tiered waterfall where the water cascades over limestone coated with mineral deposits. The limestone creates enough friction to stop slipping but is not so rough to hurt to walk on. It was a lot of fun, and a bit terrifying at times trying to keep hold of all 3 kids climbing down the fast-moving waterfalls.
A few other highlights of our time in Chiang Mai included going to the night market (the kids will remember the over-the-top chocolate waffles they got there), going to the cinema (which we rarely got a chance to do on our trip), and our nightly visit to the nearby main street lined with street food vendors to choose our dinner.
So despite the shitty situation we found ourselves in while in Chiang Mai, we were so touched by the kindness of strangers. There was our fantastic and thoughtful Airbnb host without whose help I’m not sure how we would have made our way to the hospital. He didn’t hesitate to get involved, call us the ambulance and continue to check in with me on how things were going. Without his help, I’m not sure how this would have all ended up. Not only did he help us that evening, but he and a friend (to help translate) came by the hospital to visit Brett and to offer up any help they could, day or night. I’m not even sure how they found us since we book everything on Airbnb under my name but somehow they did. Such kind and thoughtful people. Days later they left thoughtful Christmas presents at our door for the children.
There was the kind man in the lobby of our apartment building who could have walked past but instead chose to get involved in an obviously difficult situation with screaming kids, Brett vomiting and me clearly in a state of panic. He spoke some English and he was so perfectly calm and calming. I don’t even know his name. I wish I could have somehow acknowledged what a difference he made to us in that time.
There was Fletcher, the friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend, who spent time talking to me on that crazy night in the emergency ward when I didn’t know what was happening or whether we were in a reputable hospital facility. She also chose to get involved for no other reason than to help. She also called to check in on me in the following days and ended up taking our family out to explore Chiang Mai while we waited for Brett to return.
There was the hospital worker who saw our exhausted little family in the waiting room falling asleep waiting for a taxi that never arrived. He stepped in and got us home safety. Despite how scary that whole experience was, the people that we met on that evening humbled me and reminded me how most people really are genuinely good people.
Of course there was also the kindness and support of our friends and family. There was Chantal, texting with me through all the drama and finding a local Chiang Mai contact for support. There was our friend in Portland that was an ER doctor who made it possible for Brett to get quality and quick care as soon as he arrived at the ER. There was our amazing family that picked him up at the airport, got him quickly to the E.R., and looked after him while he was recovering. There were our many friends in Portland who reached out to check in on all of us and the many generous offers to open up their homes to Brett while he recovered.
We had a very happy reunion with Brett on January 2nd, just over a week after he left for Portland. Our adventure continued and we were even more thankful for our health, our family, and this amazing opportunity to travel. Through our misadventures in Chiang Mai, we were able to experience the kindness of strangers and understand just how important and impactful it is to show kindness and support, even in seemingly small ways, to help others when they are in need. This kindness, for no other reason than to help others, is what we will try to pay forward as we continue our adventures in life.