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Let's see -- where were we? Something about traveling, Italy, noses...
Ah yes -- nosebleeds on parade.
Cupcake's nose can erupt like Mount Etna if you just look at it; it's a special power she has that we try to devote only to good. So when my father hugged her and inadvertently touched her nose, the gushing recommenced.
This time the tag team included most of the family:
- Armed with tissues and bidet towels (they were fresh! and clean! I swear!) Robespierre and I hovered over her as she lay on the floor, blocking our access to the bedroom and the bathroom.
- My sister called a friend in the States, a doctor who happens to know everything about everything. He suggested trying to locate some medications to help shrink the blood vessels.
- My brother-in-law found an all night pharmacy (by now it was 10:30 p.m., Rome time, and I don't even want to think about what time it was according to our body clocks) and returned with pseudoephedrine pills and epinephrine ointment (bless those la-di-da, unregulated Europeans), both of which I'll be selling on eBay next week (KIDDING, Regulator People. I'm just kidding. Please don't hunt me down, cancel my eBay account and send me to prison with Bernie Madoff and Phil Spector).
- Robey asked the people at the hotel's front desk if they could provide a doctor. The gave him an adapter (bless those English-as-a-second-language Italians).
What we needed:
Image here
What we got:
Image here
- My father and I loaded Cupcake into a taxi and took her to Rome's Ospedale Pediatrico BAMBINO GESU (lots of pictures of Baby Jesus there, you bet) for treatment of tre episodi di epistassi durante la nottata. After providing Cupcake's name, birthdate and nationality, which the receptionist took down on a piece of scratch paper, we waited more than an hour to see medico richiedente Anna Maria Musolino, who told us (via a most likely extremely expensive phone call to Doctor Friend in the States, who, in addition to knowing everything about everything, is fluent in English, Spanish and Italian) that, since the nose had stopped bleeding while we waited she couldn't pack it, but I should bring Cupcake back the next day to consult an ENT, and could they please have the bed back because they needed it for the next patient.
Cupcake and I slept until 1 p.m. the next day. Later she delivered personalized thank you letters to each family member, even my niece and nephew, who slept through the whole thing.
Their letter read somewhere along these lines:
Dear Stretch and Artypants: Thanks for nothing. Love, Cupcake.
