Another interview

There’s another interview with me, and a photo, in this month’s ”Flisa Bla’” This is a monthly free magazine that comes out in Solör and it’s mostly for advertising, but they also have quite a few articles about different local stuff in there – and this time I am among the local stuff. 

You can find the magazine on www.flisa.no, you’ll see a photo of the cover of the magazine, and the title is “Flisa Bla’”, the little article about me is on page 18. The article is in Norwegian, and it pretty much says much of the same that’s been said in other interviews already. The title is “Writes 5000 words a day”. If any of you English speaking people want a translation, send me an email and I’ll try to get around to doing one. 

Work, work, work

There seem to be too much work and too little play in my life these days. This if of course not true. Granted, I do have a lot to do with my studies (a short course in Spanish and my correspondence course in Nordic language and literature) and writing (started to write book number 8 today) – but it’s not really too much. It’s just that when I was in a more regular job, I would go there every day and meet other people, and then socialize through work. Now I spend day after day, sitting alone in my basement flat, and most of the human contact I’ve got is through chatting with people on either MSN or Facebook. I need to get out more!

And I am now making arrangements to do just that. I’ll be renting a room in Oslo from a friend about one to two weeks each month, and this should give me plenty of more opportunity to get out and meet with friends since most of the now live in the Oslo area. 

If you’re not happy about how you live your life, you’re the only one who can do something about it. A bit of wisdom there for you. 

Days of our lives

I woke up with a sore throat on Monday, probably due to the fact that for the last three weeks the weather has been changing a lot from cold to warm to cold to warm. Now this cold has developed into a proper cold, no fun at all, but that’s unfortunately not the worse that’s happened this week.

As most of you probably know, I live in a basement flat below my parent’s flat, and at the other end of the house there’s another flat where my grandparents (my father’s parents) live. Last night at about 1 am, my mother knocked on my door. She just wanted to inform me, just in case I was awake and saw the ambulance arrive, that my grandmother had had a fall on the living room floor, and they were now waiting for the ambulance to come.

When she got to the hospital they found out that she’d broken her hip, and the doctors will operate on her this afternoon. 

Isn’t it strange how when one thing happens, lots of other things seem to happen at the same time? With my aunt’s heart attack on Friday, my grandmother’s fall last night, I’m really hoping that this is the end of it, but am now dreading what might come next. 

A horrible end to a vacation

On Thursday we drove from Untersteinach in Bavaria to Kiel in northern Germany, the drive took about 7 hours, we got on the ferry to Gothenburg at 7 in the evening. It was a nice crossing, we ate lots of food at the buffet, drank some beer and wine, my aunt Wenche and uncle Hans even danced a little.

On Friday morning we got up at 8. My aunt complained about stomach pain, and we teased her a little about having ate too much at the buffet the night before. We left the ferry at 9 and began the 3,5 hours drive back to my aunt and uncle's home in Son (about 70 km south of Oslo).

My aunt's stomach pains didn't get any better. Just before we got the the border to Norway she complained that the pain had spread to her chest and her left arm, and when we crossed the border she started throwing up and was in severe pain. She was having a heart attack.

I looked up the address to the nearest emergency room on my mobile phone, then programmed the address on my uncle's GPS. The unit said it would take us 19 minutes to drive there. I guess I don't have to say it was the longest 19 minutes of my life, so far.

The Emergency room in Sarpsborg is very hard to find. Even when we knew we were at the right address we could hardly find it, it was a little galas door that looked like the entrance to any other house, and it said with small letters on the door that this was the emergency room. I told my uncle to get my aunt in there while I took care of parking and paying for the car. When I got in there a few minutes later I was horrified to see that the nurse/secretary in there had my aunt standing on her feet, or rather hanging on the counter through a kind of glass window thingy whilst taking down her name, address and symptoms. My aunt could barely stand on her feet, my uncle had to hold her up, there was no chair in sight – and the young woman behind the counter was more busy with getting my aunt's name right than her condition. Finally she was allowed into a room where she could lay down on a bed. The doctor came shortly after, and immediately called for an ambulance. We were told that my aunt would be taken to the hospital in Fredrikstad, so my uncle and I (thank God for GPS) made our way there, only to find out when we got there that my aunt had been rushed to Ullevål hospital in Oslo. We asked the nurse at the hospital in Fredrikstad if she could tell us why, because as far as we know, people are only rushed to Ullevål in Oslo when it's very critical. She couldn't tell us anything, just told us that we would have to go to Ullevål.

It took us about 2 hours to drive there, another 2 hours that truly seemed a lot longer while we were talking about how bad this had become all so sudden.

The ambulance had made the trip from Sarpsborg to Oslo in 58 minutes, but the time we got there my aunt was already in the intensive care ward on a heart monitor, and they had also already un-blocked one of the veins to her heart.

We spoke with a nurse who told us it seems my aunt will get well again, because she got to the doctor as soon as she did. She will probably be moved to a smaller local hospital today where she'll have to stay for another 4 – 5 days.

Then finally we got to meet with aunt again. She was very tired, but alive.

In another time or place we might not have been as lucky.

What a horrible way to end a vacation.