Less than 2 weeks to go now until the trip back to the hospital to see the specialists – next week it’s the CT scan.
Meanwhile, returning to the first day in the hospital last year, when I registered at the admissions area, although we started the conversation in German the guy who processed me at the emergency accident reception turned out to be from Arizona
Waiting in the reception area of the spine specialists where I met up with my wife and mum, I was called in to see the doctor, and my wife came in with me.
The specialist told us in German that he’d looked at the X-Ray and that it was almost certain that they would have to operate - I told him that my wife couldn't understand much German and he immediately switched to almost perfect American English - if that's not an oxymoron.
The first thing my wife says to him is: ‘can we see the X-Ray?’ (the orthopaedic doctor I’d seen earlier in the day had sent me off (at a cost of 5 Euros!) with a CD of the X-Ray to show the hospital) so he brings it up on his PC monitor, and he shows the fracture in the vertebra, he’s not sure if it can be repaired by having some cement-like stuff injected into it to help it heal, or whether it will need to have metal supports; either way, they would find me a bed and admit me immediately.
Then I’m off to another room to fill in forms (including signing a long declaration that if my medical insurance is not valid, that I will pay for the treatment myself!) and do the rest of the admission stuff, like having blood samples taken and having to estimate what my weight and height are in metric (around 1.80 meters and 90 kilos at that time).
Then I'm off to a ward (on a floor called Station Seven) and assigned a bed in a four person room with a view over a car park with a helipad in the middle of it (the middle of the car park, that is, not the ward).
Then they tell me that (although it’s only mid Friday afternoon) I’m probably just in time for X-Rays but that the people who operate the CT equipment have already left for the weekend so I have to wait until Monday for a CT or MRI scan if I need one!
A grumpy guy comes in to wheel me off to the X-Ray department, which turns out to be only around the corner on the same floor as Station Seven – more X-Rays are taken, one from the front and one from the side, and then I’m wheeled back to the ward, I thank him for the excursion and he grunts.
After a while, the doctor re-appears and tells me that they will order me a corset today – they are normally only given after the operation but it will help to keep my back straight until the operation is scheduled.
Shortly after, two other guys appear with the corset – they show me how to put it on and then say that they’ll have to come back after adjusting it. One of them asks me where I’m from – when I tell him from near Liverpool, he tells me he was there once, to catch the ferry to the Isle of Man – I ask him if it was for the TT races, he replies to say why else would you want to go there! I say that there are lots of other reasons.
When he returns later with the adjusted corset, he says that he has lots of good memories of the Isle of Man , including the big water wheel and the beer, although neither of us can remember the name of the brewery. It took me a while to remember the name, but it came to me later: website of the Brewery
The doctor then returns with a colleague (who turns out to be the surgeon who will operate on me) and they say that they have checked the X-Rays and it’s certain that they will have to operate, but they will need to see the CT images on Monday before deciding exactly what will happen. Depending on the schedule, it looks like they won’t be able to operate until the following Friday, which is a whole week away – in the meantime, I have to wait and rest and wear the corset…………….
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