Medical Tourism

Hello blog, my old friend. It's been a while. So long in fact that I don't think anyone else ever really comes here. I think it's just you and me. That's okay. I mostly cone here for me anyway. They can all go hang out on Instagram--whatever that is. I think it's kind of like a blog but without words. Which makes it sort of the opposite of a blog doesn't it?  I'll take words over photos any day. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. But why would you give away a thousand beautiful words in exchange for one crummy picture?  I digress....see what I mean about the words?  You couldn't have gotten the half of that from a picture.
I'm sitting here in a private hospital in Genova, Italy. Here's a picture of my view out the window:

But that doesn't tell you anything now does it?  See what I mean?  Why is she in a hospital? Why Italy? Why January? Why Genova?  None of that can you get from this picture. So I disagree about the value. It's a nice enough picture but surely it's only worth 15, maybe 25 words tops. Maybe it's not just any picture that's worth a thousand. Maybe it's only certain ones.  How about this one? 

Does this one provide any more context?  Perhaps you can see that I'm sitting on a black sofa with my shoes on in a room of a coffee shop. So maybe you can infer that I'm not actually a patient at this hospital?  But still, you are left to wonder just why I find myself here, trying desperately to remember my once passable Italian and to round out my limited vocabulary with terms like flebo and causalgia. 

Well, if you must know, my husband is the patient and strangely enough there is a treatment for his rare condition that is only available in Italy. We've waited a good four years or so for the FDA to approve it back home. And even had our doctor attempt to obtain the medicine to administer stateside--FDA be damned-- to no avail. So here I now sit while he is upstairs being infused, via un flebo. 

Later, if he feels okay, we will attempt some sightseeing. We are in Italy after all.