The Great Flood

From Alan: Yesterday, Jeannette received her first antibody treatment called Avastin. She got it together with a strong dose of antihistamines. Together these medicines made her very tired and she slept almost the entire day. Last night, Wednesday - November 25, I started to take a shower before retiring for the evening. I must first explain that the European showers are different as the shower is not enclosed and not in a tub with a shower curtain as we are accustomed to in the US. It is part of the bathroom with a generous area of tiling that slopes toward the drain. If you are not careful, however, the water can spray all over the bathroom. When I turned the water on, only hot water came out of the shower head and it would not adjust at all so I turned it off quickly as not to get scalded. Rather than calling for help (and in all honesty what red blooded American man would call for help?), I noticed a valve that seemed to control the water flow - I assumed red for hot and blue for cold. I reached for the blue valve which was high up on the wall and turned it and it snapped right off it my hand and a tremendous rush of hot water came gushing out. It sprayed the entire bathroom and the water starting pouring out into the bedroom area, since the bedroom and bathroom are separated, not by a door that closes shut, but by a sliding door that has space all around it. I started yelling for Jeannette to call for help, but she was fast asleep. I then pulled the emergency cord in the bathroom, but I pulled it so hard that the entire mechanism came out of the wall. I threw on some clothes, ran downstairs screaming for help. The night nurse Alex called for help. It turned out that there was a meeting going on of all the mechanical and administrative people since the Clinic is only a few months old and still under construction. They quickly shut the water off. Pouring into the room came four mechanics, three administrative staff, two nurses and four housekeepers for a total of 13 people. They were moving furniture, mopping the floor, fixing the leak, yelling back and forth and rushing in and out of the room. Throughout this entire storm of activity, Jeannette slept away like a new born baby oblivious to the tumult surrounding her! She only awoke when we had to move her and all of our things to another room and then she went right back to sleep as if nothing had happened. It turned out that the mechanics found the valve to be defective, but the alarm system now does not work anywhere in the clinic and they are calling it Alan's alarm.