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Waiting for the Ouch
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Misfortunes Trials
Last month’s shenanigans
served to remind me once again of the proverb about the nail.
“For want of a nail the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe the horse was lost. For
want of a horse the rider was lost … “
… and on and on until battle and kingdom are lost. While it has many variations, it serves to
show how seemingly unimportant acts can have grave consequences, especially in
our day and age when blame appears to have replaced all sense of responsibility. As the physical laws remind us that every
action has a reaction, likewise every act has its consequence. Thus, with Maria Elena’s caduta (fall) there were consequences and a price to pay. There would be no way to dodge the
responsibility. Being so personal, affecting
especially her, it would be between the two of us to resolve, since the “for
better or worse” clause had clearly kicked in.
Ours became a singular purpose – get ourselves through the next 25 days.
By this point
she had a cane, a wheelchair, crutches, a broken foot, and a cast she couldn’t
walk on. Because of where we live in the
Borgo, Mare wanted to stay inside once she’d made it there. At issue were the stairs leading to our
door. Because she did not have a walking
cast, she could not put weight on her injured leg. She also was not willing to learn to use the
under-arm crutches we’d borrowed because of balance issues and arm
strength. I assured her that if she only
tried, in a month, she’d be able to do an iron cross on Olympic
still-rings. It never happened; I apparently
had not been persuasive enough. The
wheel chair was just fine, but by myself I could not get her up the seven or so
stairs to our door. To go out, I might have
managed, it being downhill, but Marie Elena did not want to try especially
absent a seat belt, and come to think of it, a helmet. Getting her in and out of the house would have
to be a two-man operation, and without pre-arrangement wouldn’t happen easily
or often. In any case, she was happy to
stay inside. I doubted she would make it,
but she managed to get through the days.
We had WIFI and with her tablet she occupied her days reading or
watching just about every movie on Netflix.
I was cook and bottle washer. I
did the shopping and learned not only how to make meals, like Risotto and Pasta a la Vongole, but even learned how to operate the washing
machine. I vacuumed, cleaned the house,
made the bed, washed the dishes, and assisted whenever necessary - and to think
I’d been able to avoid all that for 49 years.
It had been a long run, but little did I realize how much work was
involved. If convention were different
and men were responsible for housework and all it entailed, I’m positive domestic
work would be synonymous with sainthood.
Her tumble had
upset our vacation plans a great deal.
Many activities during our long stay had already been paid for. There were also visits by family and friends
which were in jeopardy. We had to cancel
activities that would occur in the next 25 days for sure. One included a stay by the sea with family
members at a friend’s home in Santa Maria di Castellabate that we’d looked
forward to for so long. Any delay in
Mare’s recovery, as for example not having the cast removed, would continue to
ripple through our pre-planned events including trips to Ischia, Rome’s
Trastevere district, Santorini, and Salerno.
After a few
weeks, I became fixated on the cast.
Not necessarily verbally perseverating about it, though believe me,
there was plenty of that, but certainly in my thoughts. Although my particular intonation didn’t flow
well, “Get the cast off” became a sort of personal mantra. In addition to the fact that we were in
another country, we were definitely in an altered state of existence, if not
consciousness.
When we’d
departed the Melfi hospital it was our understanding that we could have the
cast removed in Calitri. That is what we
thought we were told. I should have been
suspicious right off because the reason we’d gone to Melfi in the first place
was because there were no orthopedic doctors in Calitri. Who then would remove her cast? I hadn’t thought it through. I was too anxious to get us out of there
after she got her cast and was released.
As the cast’s
25th day anniversary approached, we began to wonder about what was needed in
order to return to the hospital. Did we
simply return to the ER? Nothing had
been mentioned in this regard. When we
talked with locals about how to proceed, we got different stories. We could never get a straight answer or
consistently the same answer, which seems to be a common occurrence in Italy. This only motivated us to keep asking.
One story said
that we needed an appointment to return to Melfi. Another said we had to once again go to the
local doctor who’d sent us to Melfi in the first place. The local doctor would give us two
“prescriptions”. One for another X-ray,
and if all was healed, another to remove the cast. It seemed that the local Primary Care
Physician (PCP), if that’s what they’re called in Italy, was always
involved. This was unlike our experience
with PCPs at home who would hand you over to a specialist who in turn would
handle everything until you were healed or dead. No need to keep checking in. There is a complex bureaucracy of paperwork in
Italy, much like our experience with paying a bill, or better yet, depositing
money in an account. No way to do it on
Internet, at least not yet.
Others counseled
that we needed an appointment. We’d
been to the ER and to return there was unnecessary. To avoid language issues, we had friends call
to schedule an appointment for us. The
phone numbers we were given, however, either never answered or didn’t work at
all. One number proved especially bizarre. It simply rang and rang. In fact, we later learned that that particular
number could only be reached from a hard line, not a cell phone like we were
using. We had never heard of such an
arrangement, especially in a wireless age.
To compound the
issue, her 25th day was on a Saturday. Could we expect that an ortho doctor would be
there on a Saturday? I thought so, but
you couldn’t be sure. What if someone came
to the ER with a broken arm or leg on a Saturday? Would they tell them to come back on Monday
because the orthopedic doctor was off for the weekend? I had my doubts.
We knew that an
appointment was a long lead item and as days passed I feared that to get an
appointment on the 25th day was slipping away. After three plus weeks in the cast, I
couldn’t imagine having to keep it on just because we couldn’t get an
appointment, or if we got one, our appointment might be off in the future, another
week or more away. In any case,
appointment or no appointment, we were going on the appointed day.
A few days
before the 25th day, my impatience got the better of me. I went to see the local doctor to try to
explain our predicament, one mostly due to ignorance. I used the translator on my cellphone to make
my case. He gave me two
prescriptions. One was for an X-ray, the
other, if all was well, was for the removal of the cast at the Melfi hospital. At last, it looked like we had a plan.
One day before
the 25th day, D-Day, plans changed when with some much-appreciated help, I
got Mare into our little Fiat, “Bianca”, and drove to the local X-ray clinic to
see if she had healed. It was not clear
to me whether I was supposed to get the X-ray in Calitri or Melfi. Why make the trip to Melfi if she’d not
healed sufficiently? If they took the
X-ray there and saw insufficient bone mending, we’d just turn around
anyway. We learned that while there had
been some “consolidation”, the fractures had not healed. We were disheartened with depression close
behind to say the least. No need to
visit the Melfi Hospital on Saturday after all.
We’d cross our fingers, lite some candles, and planned to wait a few
more days.
While I had her
in the car, in a knee-jerk reaction we immediately drove the 2.5 hours to
the US Navy Hospital north of Naples. When she had fallen I hadn’t thought about
going to the base for help since we were on the other side of Italy at the time. We didn’t expect much help from the Navy Base
but had our fingers crossed, all the while harboring low expectations. A look at her X-ray results and a second
opinion would have been great. How about
a walking cast? It was late on a Friday
afternoon when we finally got there, 3:30pm to be exact. It wasn’t a bank holiday but some sort of
hospital holiday - no ortho doctor available, just a skeleton emergency room
crew. They also hinted that as a sort of
professional courtesy, they didn’t want to interfere with treatment already
underway by an Italian doctor. By this
point we were batting zero.
About then,
depression was setting in. I’m not
sure but desperation might normally follow depression. In any case, as we drove through the Apennine
mountains to Calitri, we wanted the thing off, even if we did it ourselves. Since we had never had a broken bone
experience, not even with our children, we weren’t sure how a cast was
removed. Did YouTube have a do-it-yourself
video covering the procedure? All I’d
need was a hand-held Dremal type tool with a rotating saw blade about the size
of a fifty-cent coin, then again I’m reminded that it was due to the lack of a
fifty-cent coin that she fell in the first place. On second thought, if I tried, I’d probably
cut her foot, only adding to the problem and her misfortune.
A wine embargo went
into effect. Mare drank whole milk for
the next four days! Our thinking, it
just might help. On the 29th
day, come what may, we decided to take our chances and drive to Melfi. We’d take the risk of being rejected at the
emergency room rather than continue to play phone tag trying to get through for
an appointment. At least if we were
there, we could hopefully make an appointment.
We were off.
As we were
standing in the ER line, the male nurse from Calitri, the one we’d met on
our earlier visit, told us to go directly to the orthopedic doctor’s office and
wait. Events were definitely moving
faster. We were used to the drill by
then. Even the bricks I’d sat on before
were still there. We took a number from the wall dispenser as if we were waiting at a supermarket deli. When our turn to see the doctor arrived, we entered
the office to discover a different doctor on duty. We started anew, beginning with our latest X-ray
disk, which as the previous doctor had discovered, he couldn’t open on his
computer. He too went off to read it
somewhere else. When he returned, he
directed a nurse to remove the cast.
Heaven be praised! I nevertheless
wondered how this could be. Based on the
same data he’d seen, we’d been told in Calitri that it hadn’t completely
healed. Maybe 25 days was all that was
allowed, and casts were habitually removed on the appointed day. Had he even looked at the disk? I’d hoped another X-ray, for an updated look
at the situation inside the cast, would have been taken when we arrived. This prompted me to present the prescription
for the X-ray that I’d brought along. His
response, regardless of the language differences, was a universal snub. He immediately dismissed the idea mumbling
something that, much like his writing, was hard to understand. It turned out to be a gibber of criticism. It seems it was written on the wrong colored
paper! Oh, what do those rural doctors
know? We learned it should have been on
reddish prescription paper, possibly some sort of fraternal collusion known
only among orthopedic doctors not unlike some secret technique plumbers might
only share among themselves. Not a
problem, in true snub for snub roguish fashion, I crumpled it up when he
returned it to me and threw it in the basket. In any case, we were off to the cutting room. 
On that familiar table once again, Maria
Elena winced far more this time than when the cast had been applied. There was no pain, just the anticipation of
pain as the spinning saw blade cut through the plaster impregnated tape. It took some time to remove her artfully decorated boot which over the weeks had become the repository of many a budding artist’s work and flamboyant “John Hancock” style signatures. Back in the office, the doctor manipulated
her ankle. He tilted it up, then down,
then rotated it left and right followed by turns first left then to the
right. With each movement he’d ask her
if there was any pain to which she replied, heaven be praised again, “no”.
We literally “got
the boot” two hours after we arrived.
With Maria Elena back in her wheelchair, we rolled across the parking
lot to a conveniently located orthopedic store.
It was there where we purchased the walking boot recommended by the
doctor. It extended to her knee and had
enough dangling Velcro straps to compete with Medusa’s head teaming with
snakes. Rigid and walkable, it proved to
be a big improvement over the cast.
But there was further
beatific light ahead, a small garnish of therapeutic hope. She would shortly experience the soothing
recuperative powers from soaking in Greek waters. It was not what the doctor ordered. We’d never have been able to get him to write
such a prescription, no matter the color of the paper. Even if he had, it would have been as
effective with the airline and hotel as that earlier directive to the Melfi hospital
had been for the X-ray. But that was
where we were headed, sore foot, boot, wheelchair, and crutch notwithstanding. We’d planned a get-away to Greece during our
stay in Italy. As if by some law of rare
events, the springs beside the uninhabited island of Nea Kameni, located within
Santorini’s ancient volcanic caldera, have warm pools thought to have medicinal
powers that help alleviate skin problems and of all things, wait for it … “bone
conditions!” Could the gods be more
merciful? The reputed mythical nail now retrieved,
the shoe back in place, I’d be the first to note when she got her foot back and
the renewed giddy-up in her gait.
From that Rogue
Tourist
Paolo
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