slowly she turned

We left Sept. 23, Monday night, for Edinburgh, Scotland, where we planned to spend a few days before and after a tour to the Highlands for eight days. Our plans would be changed quite a bit on Tuesday, Sept. 24. That’s when, on our way to our hostel, my husband Sandy took a nosedive off the bus from the airport onto the sidewalk and busted his face and broke his arm at the shoulder joint. Thus, we spent the rest of Tuesday, Sept. 24 in an ambulance and hours in the local hospital.

I need to acknowledge the incredible help of the bus drivers and a homeless man at the site of Sandy’s accident. Rob, the homeless guy, was the first to help. He had a first aid kit and put his raincoat over Sandy until I could get situated to help him. He would NOT take the money I offered him later. The bus drivers, Gail and Ryan, stayed with us and provided more antiseptic wipes and called the ambulance for us. The EMTs, Ashley and Haley, expertly and compassionately guided us through the process and brief paperwork and into the hospital.

We had heard stories of other people experiencing emergency care in the UK and Europe, and still we managed to be surprised. Nobody mentioned money or insurance AT ALL. The ambulance ride was free. The hospital care was free. I was told when I asked that if he had to come back to the hospital for a second visit there would be a charge, but he did not so we’ll never know what that might have been.

When Sandy fell, we thought for sure he had broken his nose. He had scrapes and a big cut on the bridge of his nose and bled so much from inside and outside his nose that it was scary. (He takes blood thinners.) They thought he might have dislocated his shoulder. It was after he was taken out of triage and into the emergency department and x-rayed that the v-shaped crack in his humerus (upper arm bone) was found. They checked out his head thoroughly, and as I already knew, it was very hard and he had no brain trauma or breakage. They couldn’t put a cast on it so he was provided with an arm sling and painkillers and discharged with the instruction to keep it immobile and an orthopedic doctor would follow up with a second opinion.

The waiting room and bathrooms were not fancy like our hospitals here in Greensboro. There wasn’t artwork and carpet. The floors and walls were scuffed up and the seating was plastic. There were vending machines for snacks, cold and hot drinks. Maybe our medical system here should consider cutting down on the expenses for everything to be pretty and stylish and just spend their budget on patient care and hygiene and maintenance and salaries for health care workers. Just saying.

The doctors, nurses, and staff were all young, patient, friendly, and compassionate.

The only real concern I had was that I wasn’t given documentation, either on paper or electronically, about the details about what happened to him and the care he was given. I had to contact a legal department and they contacted me 9 days later. Same with the follow up call about his condition. By that time, we were on our way home to the states. I’ll get a package in the mail at some point with this paperwork and a CD of the x-rays, hopefully.

Anyway, we took a taxi to our hostel, and he fell AGAIN trying to get into the cab. Hit the back of his head and laid in rain puddles. For a little while I wondered if the cab driver and I were going to be able to get him on his feet because his legs had just given out and his thigh muscles weren’t working. Finally I managed to get his feet under him while the driver lifted his torso without hurting his arm (this was the biggest challenge), we got him in the cab, and up to our hostel room.

We had reserved a small private room with a bathroom at the hostel, and while it was quite cute and interesting, it turned out to be the tiniest room I have ever stayed in. It might have been fine for one person, or a young couple used to camping in a tent, but it had to work for the first night. The hostel had been a former jail so the rooms were former jail cells. The bathroom took up about a third of the floor space, the bed was against the end of the room in a way that I had to crawl over Sandy to get to the other side, and our luggage took up most of the rest of the floor space. I went out at 10 pm to a take-out place to get us food, since we had not eaten since a pitiful airplane breakfast early that morning. At that point, we had been awake for 36 hours.

Thus, there were no photos of Edinburgh from this day except a photo that I took of Sandy on the sidewalk, which he doesn’t want public.