I used to sometimes try to catch her, but never even caught her name

[venta]

Having slept all night with my leg elevated and another ice pack on it, I got up with extreme caution. I took a few tentative steps, leaning on ChrisC, to go to the bathroom. OK, my leg seems to be able to bear my weight this morning. Hurrah! It is not serious after all, and rapperaddict is not going to kill me.

On the way back from the bathroom, my knee informed me this was an incorrect assessment of the situation and collapsed under me again.

Bother.

I've never, formerly, "really" injured myself. I got through a childhood of falling off climbing frames, out of trees, and down stairs without a broken bone. I've sprained ankles and wrists, but never terribly seriously. I broke a tooth and needed stitches once falling off a skate cart, but that's about as bad as it ever got.

Assiduous readers of this blog may remember me falling off a wall in 2013. That hurt. It hurt a lot, but not enough that I couldn't walk around (if rather gingerly).

This knee problem hurt. But worse that that, I didn't seem to be able to put any weight on it at all. Things felt broken in a much more serious and frightening way than I was used to. I had a little wibble, sitting on the bed, and decided it was time to take Patrick up on his offer to drive me to hospital.

On the plus side, when I was sitting still with my leg up, nothing hurt. So I returned to my old friend the sofa and worked my way slowly through the breakfast Rachel insisted I eat before heading out.

The hospital was about half an hour away. And despite being in an area not particularly prone to English tourists, everyone spoke at least a little English. (As Rachel put it: doctors are educated people. In Austria and Germany, educated people will speak English.) Most people spoke to me in German first, but switched languages when I answered rather haltingly.

I was ushered very speedily through a door into a consulting room. At least, it looked like a consulting room at first, but it then turned into an office full of people. Would I take off my trousers and sit on the couch? Which seemed like a weird thing to do in what was basically an office, but there you go. I did it, and nobody batted an eyelid. I've always been led to believe Teutonic attitudes to undressing and nudity are rather different to British ones :) I was examined, and sent to be x-rayed.

The radiographer, who was a little abrupt, barked at me as I came in "Sind Sie Schweine?"

Um, am I pigs? That seems like an unlikely question. Also grammatically incorrect. So let's assume she didn't really say what I heard. Seeing me looking baffled, she tried English: "Are you pregnant?"

Aha. Sind Sie Schwange. A perfectly sensible question from a radiographer. I was not, so we proceeded.

Then back to the doctor in the consulting room. He'd looked at the x-ray. There was nothing broken.

Hurrah!

But...

Ah. There is always a but.

He suspected damage to two ligaments: ACL, and "the one down the inside of the knee" (maybe he didn't know the English. Neither did I.) I needed an MRI as soon as I got home. It might need surgery.

Bother.

Also, death at the hands of RapperAddict is alarmingly back on the cards.

Two orderlies descended on me. With terrifying speed, they produced a cybernautical legbrace made mostly of Velcro, and wrapped me in it. One injected me in the stomach with a thrombosis prophylactic while explaining how to inject myself with them every day in the future, the other fitted me for crutches. Overall, the experience was one of frightening efficiency. I was in, registered, examined, x-rayed, looked at, provided with aids and drugs and ushered out again in under 50 minutes. The only gap in the whole edifice of competence was noticed when I got home: I'd been provided with a CD which, rather than containing my knee x-rays, had a nice set of images of a 20 year old chap's shoulder injury.

So there was bad news on the knee front. But on the plus side, I now had crutches and could move myself from A to B without being wholly reliant on another person. I had a legbrace which, while I still couldn't put any weight on my leg at all, kept it from twisting painfully as I moved around. Getting home from Austria suddenly looked a lot less daunting. Rachel, who's damaged knee ligaments before, suggested that serious damage usually means serious swelling, which I didn't have. The Austrian hospital was probably being over-cautious.

In the evening, Patrick trundled us back to the airport (with a minor detour to a chemist. Someone had handed me some papers, but dropped in the German word Rezept which I had incorrectly registered as receipt. So we detoured to pick up my prescription from an out-of-hours pharmacy counter). ChrisC and I were stopping in an airport hotel overnight, ready for an early-morning getaway (this was always the plan, based on Monday morning flights being way cheaper than Sunday night). We sailed up to the first floor in the lift, and discovered that our room was about as physically far away from the lift as it possibly could be. By the time I'd reached it, my confidence was a little dented: crutches are extremely hard work.

But I made it out again (and back again) to eat a meal in the bar. Having not had a proper wash in what felt like forever, I planned to sit in the bath and use the shower head, but a small hotel bathroom, a rigid showerscreen and a leg that didn't bend conspired to make getting into the bath an impossible operation. I was sure it should be possible, but eventually conceded defeat. Instead, I flopped into bed ready for an early start.

Heroes of the day: Rachel, Patrick, the Austrian medical system, ChrisC.

Comments

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

"Are you pregnant?"

That's more likely an après-ski accident. ;-)

[venta.livejournal.com]

:p

[susandennis]

OUCH! That does not sound like a bag of giggles.

But, wow, how happy that it didn't happen in the U.S. 1. Likely your accent would have made communications with medical staff way less easy and 2. At the end of 50 minutes, they would have gotten most of the info they needed from you at the front desk and told you to go sit and wait - where you would still be 5 days later!

[venta.livejournal.com]

Emergency departments in the UK are pretty similar - one measures attendance times in hours, not minutes! Mind you, having heard how much Germans and Austrians pay for medical insurance, I'm feeling better about our system now!

[susandennis]

Excellent point.

[emarkienna.livejournal.com]

Thankfully my UK A&E visit for my knee injury went through quickly, I think within an hour (I was thinking "oh no, I'm going to be stuck there all night"), though no doubt this was helped that I needed to be seen to as soon as possible. Later visits to the fracture clinic seemed to have a one hour delay as the norm...

That girl was always falling, again and again

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

I am so very ear-wormed now.
It all sounds very stressful; I want to say "Hope you're doing OK now" but I feel like I have to wait for the next installment/s!

[venta.livejournal.com]

One kudo to you :)

I am now back in the UK and being well looked after. I wasn't sure how many installments at a time people would be able to stand, they seem to have been running longer than I intended!

[motodraconis.livejournal.com]

What? Where? How? Ouch?

Ok, I've caught up now. OUCH!

But on the plus side, I am relieved to hear you're not pigs.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Being diagnosed as pigs would have literally added insult to injury!

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

If the inner one is the MCL (medial collateral), that's the one I tore ~20 years ago. Walking out of the bar in the Zodiac, which was an inconvenient and embarrassing place to do it. (I hadn't even started my first drink, which hit the floor with me!)

There's also a posterior cruciate ligament but if he knew ACL in English he probably also knows PCL. :)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yes, MCL is the bunny, it turns out.

I did get a nice letter to pass on to my own doctor at home, which was of course all in German. Where the ligaments are LCA and LCM, if you're interested :)

[doomcookie99.livejournal.com]

Aww.. I broke my foot a number of years ago and they put a boot, gave me some pain relievers and off I went. I wish your knee a speedy recovery and you too. :D

[venta.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[doomcookie99.livejournal.com]

You are welcome :D

[deborahw37.livejournal.com]

I was actually rather amused that the efficient system sent you off with someone else's X rays, it's good to know that glitches happen even in super wooper duper systems

Glad you got the brace

Can't wait for the next instalment!

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yes, I was quite relieved to note that the Austrian system isn't completely perfect!

[emarkienna.livejournal.com]

Hope things will be okay. I injured my knee a few years ago after falling over with some luggage - I remember things feeling "wrong", and at the time it felt like it would never be right again, but it does get better!

I too had never had any significant injuries before that (nothing needing hospital attention), it did give me a feeling of "I guess I'm not invincible after all".

[venta.livejournal.com]

Thanks - it's nice to know that such feelings are reasonably normal! Did you manage a complete recovery?

[emarkienna.livejournal.com]

Yes things got back to normal.