The winter break started very optimistic, we were healthy and fully ready to travel. There are thoughts that always appear in my mind before such departures – “what if processor broke”? So before leaving I’ve checked where the nearest Med-El in Mexico is and assumed that we would get there if there was any malfunction. I tracked their branch about 200km from our hotel.
The doctor told me quite recently that in the case of ear infection you can’t travel by plane – that was a first time I’ve ever heard such thing, but it seems logical that something may for example happen during the change in the pressure. I had a rehabilitation scheduled at Kajetany, so I’ve met their doctor (It had to be a private visit – no chance to get the appointment with the state doctor). Hela had healthy ears, so everything seemed very optimistic.
I’d also like to mention that I’ve informed the traveling agency before the flight that we would fly with handicapped child who has cochlear implants. Our plane departed at noon, it was just right time for traveling with kids. At the airport, during the check-in, while passing through the metal detector, we kept informing the staff that Hela has implants and she shouldn’t use the gate. Airport employees were very nice all the time, so we didn’t have any problem with letting Hela walk around the sensors. The flight to Mexico lasted 13 hours, I was afraid of such long time, but everything went smoothly, without problems. Hela doesn’t feel any discomfort in planes and is very talkative. We’ve checked the noise level with an app and the result was about 80 decibels, so after few hours the sound of engines became a nuisance.
In Poland it’s the middle of the winter and here we suddenly fell into the middle of the summer – the feeling is incredible! Way to “recharge my batteries” and find contemporary respite from the clamor of fast-paced world. I have an impression that time is passing faster and faster, but trips like this let us slow down for a moment and just be together as a family. Those moments strengthen us and – above all else – our children as well.
We’ve taken the newest Med-el swimming pouches, but we didn’t use them even once. Hela’s used to taking off her processors and running into water, with a smile on her face. On the other hand I was afraid to test the pouches there, if something had drenched it would have been a big problem, we can test them in Poland when it gets hotter. There was this one morning in the middle of the trip, when Hela woke up and put on both processors and cried that the batteries need to be replaced. We replaced them and one processor was still malfunctioning. We’ve tried to replace the wire with no positive result, this made us a little bit upset, but thankfully we had one spare coil – when we replaced it, Hela said “It’s working now”. We breathed a sigh of collective relief. I think that such emergency moments when devices break are permanent part of implanted people’s lives, but everyone hopes that such moments would seldom happen. I still do. Hela, despite having both implants and understanding everything on each one of them, wants to wear both and gets upset when one of them isn’t working.
We were in Mexico for 11 days, together with my sister, her husband, their son Felix and my mom. Sea, beach, swimming pool, aquapark, delicious food and 28 degrees in the shade…. I hope we’ll be able to go on a similar trip next year. We’ve travelled to the village nearby where we saw how Mexicans live, also visited crocodile, monkey and parrot park. In the evenings there were some performances held in the hotel, our children were very interested in them. Below our trip in a nutshell. Have a good time watching it 🙂