First 24 Hours in Turkey

    Memorial Hospital made arrangements through their International Marketing Department staff to pick us up from the airport and drive us to our hotel room. I was glad to have arrived earlier than planned, after landing we still needed our tourist visa in order to get through customs. This was a very long line and the process took some time. We then went and got our bags, I really hoped they would be there. When we checked our bags in at the Salt Lake airport, the lady at the check in counter said that a nine hour lay-over in New York was beyond the cut off for bag transfers, she had to write up special instructions to transfer our checked in luggage. I kept envisioning our bags going around, and around, on the luggage carousel at JFK unclaimed. I hoped the special instructions worked, luckily they did, and with bags in hands we were ready to go.

     My instructions from Memorial Hospital was someone would be at the airport waiting and holding up a sign with my name. We looked around and figured they must not be here yet since our plane arrived early. About ten minutes later my husband noticed my name, we waved to let them know we seen them and walked around to greet them. There was a male and a female, the male was the driver and the female had been assigned to me through the International Marketing Department from Memorial Hospital. Her name is Pervin, and she will assist me with all of my appointments and consultations, and during Surgery. She also will help us with anything else we need while in Turkey. She speaks English, and will be a big help as we get around in this new country. We loaded our luggage and we were off to the hotel. The drive to the hospital was a little intense, in Turkey they are not good with following the traffic laws, so everyone seems to do what they want, a little scary, but we made it in one piece, and never saw one accident on our 40 minute ride.

      Memorial Guest House is where we will be staying, it is affiliated with the hospital for patients and family members of patients. We will pay a nightly fee of 130 euros or 170 us dollars, a little on the high end, but we went with it for the convenience. My first impression of the hospital when walking in was, this is really nice, the hospital is very clean, and is set up very organized. Once checking in, Pervin gave us our instructions for the next day, and also her number just in case we needed anything. I was already laying down (whoa, on a very hard bed) during her instructions, I was so sleepy (I'd only had maybe two hours of sleep in the last 36 hours), I was out within seconds. 4 hours later I woke up and felt hungry, it is 4:30 pm in Turkey, Pervin told us there was a cafeteria in the lobby and that is where we could get something to eat.

     We first decide to call home and check in on the kids, it was early morning in Utah, and if we hurried we could talk with our kids before they left for school. We called our oldest son first, he was staying at a neighbors and friends house. Oops, we forgot there was no school for the middle school that day, he had to get woken up, and it was not a very productive phone call. We let him know we had made it to Turkey, and that we loved him, we then let him go so he could go back to sleep. We then called our house, we were able to talk to all of the kids except our three year old, he was still sleeping. We kept it short because they needed to get to school soon. Everyone seemed fine, and I felt relieved.

     Off to the cafeteria, I'm not sure what to expect, but here we go, our first adventure in the Turkey world all by ourselves.We get down to the lobby and we see a cafe, we are not sure if this is the same as the cafeteria Pervin had mentioned to us earlier, but we go in. At first we wondered if we seat ourselves or wait to be seated, we wait a few minutes and no one acknowledges us, so we walk up to the counter were they are preparing drinks and serving food and say "Hi". I knew not even one single word in the Turkish language, not even hello. They smile and said something in Turkish and gestured for someone to come over, he said "English" we say "yes," "come" he says and we follow. He sits us down and goes to get us an English menu. Okay, we can read things that make sense, good, I ordered a chicken burrito, and my husband gets a salad, we point to the menu to show him what we are saying, he nods and leaves towards the kitchen. He comes back to see if we needed anything to drink, I say "water", and he gave me a puzzled look, he says " uh, ice tea, cola," I shake my head no. My husband said "cola" someone standing near to us said something to him in Turkish, and he nodded and left. Me and my husband exchange smiles, now we are worried, what is he doing, and I think we were both wondering what food and drink was actually going to show up at the table. I could tell we had the staff on their toes, they were talking with one another with these smirks on there faces as they were preparing our order. Our server comes back with a can of coke and a bottled water, wow! I'm shocked, we got exactly what we needed. I asked pointing to the water "Turkish name," he gives me a puzzled look I say "how to say? what's this called? Turkish name?" while pointing at the water. The man standing near us says "su, called su" I hold up my water and say "su" he nods his head yes. There you have it, I have learned my first Turkish word su, it is water, now I only have a few more hundred to go. Our dinner is brought to the table and I am surprised, we got what we had asked for. My burrito was filled with grilled chicken, onions, and peppers green, red, and yellow, some carrots, and a couple of string green beans. It came with some tortilla chips and salsa, sour cream, and guacamole, Not bad. My husbands salad comes with no dressing, our server goes and gets two slender neck glass bottles and pours one with lemon and the other with oil on his salad for him. I think he would've preferred ranch, but we're pretty sure there is no ranch dressing in Turkey.

     We get back to our room, our room is very hot and uncomfortable. We play around with the thermostat to get it set on cool. We get out our laptops and check our emails and look in on Facebook, and I get started on a new post for my blog. We finally have wifi, it was nice to get connected back to the social media world. I see a private message from one of my neighbors, and she explains the mother of her neighbor across the street, suffers with PNE and she asked if she could share my blog with her, I say yes. I had just found a PN support group on Facebook just a little over a week before we were leaving for Turkey. I had never signed up to be on Facebook, but after I had put a post on the pudendal hope website about my surgery in Turkey, someone suggested joining the Facebook Support group. Mostly because they knew of someone in the US who had just recently went to Turkey for the same surgery. (Well all my friends who kept asking me to get on Facebook, I'm finally there.) I had to talk to this person, this was huge news, someone had already been, and I needed to know what her experience was like and how she was feeling. So, I join Facebook and look for PNE, there seemed to be a couple of groups, I look up this specific person name and ask to be her friend, and then I ask to join the PN support group. After being accepted to the group I seen there was over 200 people like me, I'm shocked, honestly I thought my condition was so rare, and it felt like I was the only one going through this. I wrote up my first message and just like that I am talking with people just like me. I am so thankful to have found this amazing group of people just a week prior to leaving. They are great supporters of what I am about to do, and they all wish me the best, and they are all praying for my recovery, and it means so much. Thanks all my PN friends. A week prior I was able to talk with the person who came to Turkey first, she had only good things to say and the best news, she is 95% recovered. I needed to hear her story and I needed the support of this PN group.

     We decide we should probably get to bed, it is about 1:30 in the morning, and we were still tired from all of our traveling. We turned out the lights and tried to get some sleep. I was having a hard time sleeping because one, the room is still very hot and uncomfortable, and two, the bed is extremely hard. For the first time since having this condition, I was having a hard time with my pain while lying down. At 2:30 we go out to the main desk and try to get help with cooling our room down. After a few strange looks and nodding of heads, he finally understood what we needed and came down to change the settings on the thermostat. By 4:00 am, I am still laying in bed awake, so I get up and grab the laptop. I get on to my Facebook page and notice I have a private message and it was sent just 3 minutes ago, It is my neighbors mother, and she also lives in Salt Lake. Now I have someone who lives only minutes away and I can hardly wait to meet her in person. We spent some time chatting back and forth and did a little comparison of our condition, and what doctors we had talked to. I am really looking forward to meeting with her, and I am really liking this Facebook thing, it couldn't have came at a better time. I never did sleep that night, I got up at seven and started to get ready for my appointment with Prof. Erdogru. Pervin was meeting us in the lobby at 9:00 am to help us get to my much anticipated appointment for that day.