Elder Jared Hammer: Jared's Hospital Visit

This is Jared's mom. We got a call from Jared's mission president last week letting us know that Jared had been taken to the hospital for some heart palpitations. Carl even got to talk to Jared for a few minutes. (Yes! I was jealous!) Sorry we didn't let everyone know earlier. We weren't sure he wanted people to know. But he's out now and here's his side of the story!

Hello!

Well, this week was, well, very different :) And educational. What did I learn? That even Kaiser is better than the best hospital here :) (Editior's Note: Actually our family thinks Kaiser is very good!) Though I can't complain. They took very good care of me and the doctors and nurses are very friendly. I also learned a lot of new words in Armenian. Such as ultrasound, thyroid, examination, and beat (specific when describing a heart beat). So that's good :)

Well I'm assuming you all know about everything. (Sorry! Wasn't sure he wanted to tell everyone! Heart palpitations ended up being a thyroid issue.) Probably more than I do. Elder Bott would come in to visit and be like, "So what's going on with your thyroid??" and I'd be like "I don't know! What's wrong with my thyroid??" The nurses told him more than they told me. I just sat there while they pushed me full of shots and weird medicines :p

It was an interesting experience. Not fun, but very interesting. By the third day, I was very happy for a shower right after they took the monitor off of me. Brushing my teeth was also nice :)

The first and second days they kept me in intensive care, where I saw a whole lot of....interesting things. I got to make really good friends with all the nurses though. I made friends with all the cleaning ladies too. They're super nice. Halfway through the second day they sent me up to something called the "palat" which means palace. It's essentially a hotel room with a medical stretcher bed instead of a real bed. Once I was moved up there, Elder Bott was allowed to stay with me. He slept on the couch that night. After we did studies and stuff, we got kinda bored (you can only do scripture study so long) so we started making up our own games with Uno cards.

But really, I'm just glad to be back and able to work. I never knew how much I took for granted being able to do simple things whenever I want, such as shower, shave, use the toilet...Whenever I had to use the restroom, they had to unplug me from the machine, and then unhook me from the IV, and then set it all back up when I finished. So I learned to hold it :p

Well anyways, on to better things :)

There's not much else I did this week. I gave my first District meeting. That was pretty cool. It seemed to go alright :)

Okay, well I'll have more to talk about next week. The hospital took most of this week :p

Today we're going to an old ruin of some settlement in Erebuni that dates back super long ago :) The museum is closed on Mondays, like everything else in this country. Hence the Pday change :)

Love you all!

Elder Hammer

Part of Jared's letter to me:

I've been in Yerevan now for well over a year. This has kind of become my home. I love it a lot. People are super surprised that I'm still here :) But I really really like it! I love Yerevan. It's just so full of life and a ton of people. (Plus it is also nice that Nairi Hospital is here. The only American-safe hospital in the country :p ) (I included this part of the letter because I was happy to hear that there is a safe hospital there and that they aren't asking him whether he'd like clean or dirty needles!)

P.S. Apparently, even though Jared didn't mention it, it looks like Jared got our most recent package. We sent him balloons and a book about how to make balloon animals. We thought it might be a way he could talk to families and kids. Who doesn't love a good balloon monkey?