For breakfast I held some bread downstairs and went out to find I shop to buy some bread for our trip home, but I couldn’t find a shop at all. I only saw a souvenirshop where I bought to costume dolls and two postcards of Copenhagen. Then I tried to phone my mother, without any result. I tried it again later, just before we left the hotel, but had then no success either.

In the rain we drove by taxi to the station and took the "Scandinavian Express" back home. My father relaxed a little bit and I tried to read a book, because I don’t wanted to fall asleep, I read letters, but couldn’t make any word of it. I still had no idea what was wrong with him. When we arrived in Utrecht, I phoned my mother again. She was really surprised to hear my voice and even more when I told her, a short version of the whole story, but that we would be home within another hour. Even our arrival in Den Haag and our drive home went wrong. They were working on a streetparty for Saturday so the taxi couldn’t go through it and we had to walk to our home!

When I opened the door I said: "Here we are again", but when my father opened his mouth his voice was changed and he really looked even worser as before. We talked a little and went to bed then. From now on I wasn’t alone responsible anymore. It was a bit of a relief, but I was still very worried.

August 28, 1982

At 7 o’clock we were all awake and we decided to call Dr. Hamer. Our own doctor became a father just some days ago and wouldn’t be available the whole month. Luckily, the man came immediately and he had no idea either what was wrong! No wonder, he had never seen my father before in his life. I went to the pharmacy immediately, but the pills didn’t work at all. But my father existed to go downstairs where he even had the courage to have breakfast with us! In the afternoon, we wanted that he went to bed again, but no he existed to go upstairs to his own room on the second floor of the house. We said that it would cost him a lot of energy and so on, but he didn’t listen at all. If there would be something wrong he only had to yell through the intercom. My mother felt asleep downstairs and I took a little walk. And just my absents was the fact my father waited for, but I’ll tell you about that later.

At 5 o’clock we went upstairs and said to him, that it would be better from now on not to go up-stairs anymore and he answered: "You’re right" and from that moment he didn’t bring the subject up anymore and stayed downstairs or on the first floor. At eleven we went to bed.

August 29 – 30, 1982

During three long days my father stayed at home. We had a doctor in the middle of the night at Sunday, because he could hardly breath anymore. When we called for a doctor it was hardly to get the man so far that he really showed up. When he finally arrived, I got another shock. The man was the father of one of my brownies at Scouting! I just met the man two weeks before by the installation of his daughter as a brownie. Of course, he didn’t recognize me at first but when I silently told him that I knew him, it must have been a shock for him too. Anyway, a day later Dr. Hamer came along as well and he suggested that, when nothing would change, it would be better to transport my father to the hospital. And so it happened on Tuesday August 30. The doctor called an ambulance and they drove us to the "Rode Kruis Ziekenhuis" here in Den Haag where he was send to the Intensive Care immediately.

Back to Contents G. W. Stinis

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