The Luckiest Kind of Unlucky
The more I tell the story of what happened to our family in China, the more I can’t shake how incredibly lucky we were during one of our unluckiest moments ever.
The story goes like this…
It was Fall Break for our boys and we had heard again and again the middle of October was the perfect time to visit Beijing. It’s not too hot, not too cold and the air pollution is bearable. We knew Steve often has work travel in China so our stars aligned and we were able to piggyback our family’s travel onto a biz trip of his.
For the first time ever, we booked a tour guide to take us around the city. GreatWallMyLove.com was recommended by several friends, so it was a no brainer. Having our 3-day itinerary locked and loaded was a strange feeling, but I am always up for trying anything once.
After we booked our trip we heard a few other expat friends were also traveling to China with the same tour company at the same time. How funny we thought…
We arrived in Beijing with ease. Weird how a 4-hour flight feels short nowadays. The next morning we met our lovely tour guide, Joyce, in the hotel lobby to head out to The Great Wall of China. We were so excited as it was the one thing we were all the most pumped to experience.
We drove 1.5 hours out to the Mutianyu Great Wall and took a cable car up. It was pretty spectacular. Wild to think how the wall is 13,000 miles long and 2,300 years old. After Anders asked 35 times if it was time to take the Toboggan slide yet, we decided it was time. The whole day Steve was being extra careful with the kids making sure they were safe on the ride up, while at the wall and on the ride down. I joked with him that if anything did happen, it would be pretty cool they could say it happened at The Great Wall of China.
We finished the super fun slide down and then were planning on going to a local home to make dumplings. As we were heading back to the car, Steve was being the amazing dad he always is with our boys and playing with them. They decided to race to the car and in a blink they were off. Then Anders’ feet tangled with Steve’s and down they both tumbled. Anders hit the pavement while Steve did a perfect roll and was back up on his feet. I heard someone say, “Where is the mom?” and just like that I was running towards them.
Of course I ran to Anders first to make sure he was ok, but then I made eye contact with Steve and he said, “I broke my collarbone. I need to go to the hospital.” In that moment, I switched my attention to Steve. I took off his backpack and had him sit down. I peeled back his shirt and immediately saw he was right. The backpack had dislocated his collarbone when he had gone to roll and the bone was now pushing up his skin near his shoulder. I looked at the Joyce and said, “We need to go to a hospital NOW.”
I picked up Anders, he took some deep breaths and we walked back to the car. We made a sling for Steve from Chase’s hoodie and drove to a hospital. I had Googled international hospitals in Beijing before I left and felt better when the guide recommended the same hospital I had screengrabbed a few days prior.
Steve was a rockstar that 1.5 hour drive back to the city. They boys were scared seeing their Dad in pain and also sad that plans had changed. Soon, Anders was asleep on me, Chase played with an entire bottle of anti-bacterial gel and Steve grimaced with each bump our car went over, so obviously in pain but so strong.
When we arrived at the hospital, Joyce had called ahead so they took us right in. They gave Steve some pain medication and cut off his shirt. There was an orthopedic surgeon on staff who took Steve for X-rays and a CT scan and we waited in the room to hear if they needed to pop the bone back into place or apply a cast.
But then the surgeon returned telling us matter of factly that he needed to perform surgery that night, to install a 4-6” metal plate in his shoulder. We gasped. After a quick call with Steve’s brother-in-law, a doctor, we knew surgery was a must.
During this time, our boys were in the lobby with Joyce. After hearing this news, we knew our kids couldn’t spend the next 48 hours with us in a hospital, so we asked her to change her title from Cultural Guide to Babysitter. Five minutes later, our children were being whisked off in a minivan by a guide and driver we had only met that day. If two years ago someone would have told me I would have let my children be carried away in a car by strangers in a foreign country, I would have laughed. At that moment, I was so very grateful.
Joyce sent pictures of the kids at the hotel pool, eating dinner and watching TV in their PJs all while Steve’s surgery was being scheduled for 10:00pm. I couldn’t leave Steve alone in the hospital during surgery and then realized in that moment, I had friends in town. Just like that I shot out texts. One was at a hotel 1/2 mile away and quickly said yes to spending the night with my family instead of hers on her birthday eve. She swapped with Joyce and I was free to focus on Steve as she put the boys and herself to bed in my hotel room.
Steve’s surgery went as well as could be expected. They wheeled him back into his room at 1:30am and I lay with him until 5:00am when I headed back to the hotel. I hugged my friend and let her go back to her family.
The next morning, Joyce came to pick up our family as planned but with the intention of grabbing just the boys and taking them to see the city from a kid’s POV. The boys were happy to go with her and back to the hospital I went.
At the hospital, the head of our tour company, Xiaowei, arrived with the most beautiful bouquet of flowers an hour after me and let us know our family friends were arriving that afternoon and he combined the tours so our boys could hang with them. Just as I had been texting them, so had he, so that afternoon our boys got to go to a dumpling lunch, off to tour the Forbidden City and to a Kungfu show with their friends by their side.
Because Steve is part superhero/part nuts he insisted he was fine to leave the hospital 12 hours after surgery and head straight to the Kungfu show to meet up with them all. So we did.
That night we went back to our room as a family. Chase puked, Steve slept-ish sitting up, but we were all together and kinda sorta in one piece and that was what mattered. The next day, I let Steve rest and Joyce took the boys and I to the Summer Palace before meeting up with Steve for a Peking duck lunch. Again, cause Steve is part superhero/part nuts he decide to stay for work and we left him bruised and bandaged in Beijing.
At the airport, I looked over at check-in and sure enough saw our friends whose seats just so happened to be next to ours on our return flight. Our boys got to sit right next to their friends and as any mom who travels alone with a 3 & 5-year-old will tell you - it was pretty awesome.
As I look back on our experience in China I can’t shake how incredibly lucky we were in one of our unluckiest moments ever. Having emergency surgery in a foreign country is pretty freaking scary. But somehow, when we were at our lowest, the universe lifted us up and showed us how beautiful this world can be. How we just happened to be in a place with an amazing tour company, two awesome friends in town and a hospital that could competently perform this type of surgery - that’s next level gratitude.
If we had to do it all over again, we would do it all exactly the same…as Steve and the boys should always race to the car. But next time, I’ll hold the backpack.
