Hospitals and Other such fun!

I don't know why, but whenever Rob goes out of town for the week....the fun begins. There was the time I was at the park with Linda R and her boys in OKC and Hudson went head first down the slide.....4 stitches and a lot of blood later, he was fine. Then at least twice we have all had the stomach flu and passed it around only to be well the day before he comes home. Or the time Hudson had a raging fever and severe pain in his ear....all while Rob was away. How come he always misses the fun?

This week, he went away again. Wednesday night as we were walking down the stairs to go to dinner, the motion sensor lights in the stairwell (think "clap on clap off") went off and Hannah missed a stair and fell down. She immediately yelled and started crying. We made it down the rest of the stairs and to dinner. When we got up from dinner the pain began to be severe and she couldn't walk. So, when we got home, I carried her up the stairs to our apartment and we put her in bed. The top of her foot was swollen, so I decided if she couldn't walk the next day I would take her to get an x-ray to be sure no small bones on the top of her foot were broken. She didn't sleep much that night, and woke up crying several times because of the pain.

Upon looking at her foot the next morning I decided to take her for the x-ray. This is where the new experience began. The hospital. Thankfully I have a good friend who has lived here for many many years and was willing to come with me to the hospital. While my language is improving....my medical vocabulary still needs a lot of work. Outside of "pain" "fever" "sick" "medicine" and "appendix" (thought appendix was an important word to know just in case) I am clueless. So, I carried Hannah down the stairs and my friend met us in a taxi. We went to the hospital which is a HUGE complex full of buildings and people.

My friend said we needed to see a doctor first and he would examine her then give us a piece of paper that said we could get an x-ray. We asked the taxi driver to take us to the building where the "doctor" was located. He took us to the emergency room on the wrong side of the complex. No wheelchair. So we had to carry Hannah all the way back to the other side of the hospital complex. Then the doctor was on the 3rd floor and all the elevators were broken. My friend had a few words with the nurses about needing to get the elevators fixed because "what were sick people supposed to do...climb the stairs?" So we carried her up the 3 flights of stairs to be told the specialist was not in, but we could see a "common" doctor. We said ok, and were immediately ushered into his office. (No one else wanted to see him....maybe because he was the "common" doctor, or becasue he looked 17 years old...take your pick) The beauty of seeing the common doctor was it only cost us 30 cents to see him...the specialist would have been a whopping 75 cents to visit. He looked at Hannah's foot and said we should go have an x-ray. Good. That's what we were thinking. The bad news.....the place where you get x-rays was back outside on the other side of the complex in another building. All the while my friend is asking every nurse and doctor, "do you know where we can find a wheelchair?" Not here. Nope. Sorry. There we were with a young girl who couldn't walk....no wheelchair. So, we put her back on our backs and walked on. (aren't I dramatic)

Upon arriving at the place where you register for x-rays, we paid $20 for the x-ray and were then told the x-ray place in that building was broken. However, we could take our receipt and paper to the geriatrics building and get x-rayed there. It was only a few builings down. After what felt like a wild goose chase, including wrong turns, a supply building, and back alleys, we arrived at the geriatric building. And thankfully, they had a working elevator. While we were getting x-rays, my friend decided to go to the emergency room building because surely they had wheelchairs, and we had to wait about an hour for the results anyway. Finally success. For a mere $60 deposit she could rent a wheelchair for the day. We put our little patient in the chair and away we went. We stopped off for some coke and noodles then went to see if the results were ready.

We went back to the building where we had registered for the x-ray and were told the finished x-rays were in a bin. As we looked through all the patient's x-rays looking for Hannah's name, I kept thinking, "aren't I breaking some sort of privacy law?" Ahhhh...wait, this is not America. Cool. Look at that guy's lungs! And is that a brain? Once we found Hannah's foot....away we went, to find someone to read it.

My friend didn't have much confidence that the 17 yr. old doctor could read her x-ray, so she decided we should go into the main hospital building and find the orthopedic surgery wing....those doctors should be able to read a foot x-ray. Good thinking. We marched ourselves right into the doctor's lounge and sure enough, 10 orthopedic surgeons were "lounging". (can you imagine doing this in America?) My friend told them our situation and they all crowded around the x-ray board to look at the foreign girl's foot. They looked at the x-ray, then looked at her foot, then looked at the x-ray, then felt her foot, then looked at the x-ray again. Phew! Finally one of them said, I think it is ok, she needs to ice it 24 hours and stay off of it, then she should feel better. But then.....the head surgeon came in. He took command of the room and immediately looked at Hannah's x-ray and felt her foot then said, "This x-ray is not clear enough, the small bone going to her pinky toe my be broken. You need to get another x-ray." WHAT!!?!?! The other 10 doctor's in the room didn't think so. Then he left. We decided to go the ice route and see how she felt the next 24 hours before we did anything else. After all we didn't want to go through all that again.

Hannah spent the rest of the day in bed with ice on her foot and weight off of it. The next day we wrapped her foot and she went to school....limping along. (It was only a half day, so I thought I could deliver her to her chair and then pick her up from her chair). Today is Saturday, and she is still limping, but the pain isn't so bad, and she is feeling a lot better. She won't be running any races soon, but we think she will recover just fine!!

Things I learned:
1. Always appreciate your spouse. It is so much easier when he is around!!
2. I will always seek to help those in a medical office or hospital who look lost and seem to have no clue what to do or where to go.
3. The wheel chair is worth more money than medical care. At least that was my impression of the day.
4. When was the last time I paid $20.30 to see the doctor in the emergency room and get x-rays plus got to look at other people's x-rays?
5. After carrying my 10-yr-old around for several hours, I need to go visit the blind masseuse.