One-Legged Travels

In the story of the big bike ride, I mentioned falling in the street because my ankle snapped.  Apparently that snap, one of several that happened in the two weeks after the bike ride, was the shredding of my right Achilles Tendon.  After the last snap, it was a bit easier to walk without stabbing pain.  But my ankle then had a dent at the top.  And every night I would wake up with screaming cramps in that calf muscle.  I didn't realize before this that I often stretch like a cat while I'm waking up.  But now I woke up in fear of moving.  All my life when I got a leg cramp I would stamp on that leg to make it relax.  This didn't work, because my calf muscle was disconnected from the foot.  At first I just yelled and endured until the cramp would slowly subside.  After two nights of this, including times waking up in the middle of the night yelling, and scaring the poop out of poor Bart, I found  II could massage the muscle with my hands, and Bart could help, just to get the muscle to go out of spasm.
    Just before the last two tendon popping pains, we had gone to a Dr. in Prague who speaks English and takes cash.  It cost about $25.  He sat at a desk with his secretary in a facing desk, in a small room with an exam chair and table.  There was no dent in my ankle yet, but it was swollen and hot.  He referred me on to Canadian Medical, who have an Orthopedic Dept.  But they couldn't get me in for a full week.  And during that week, the tendon finally gave way completely.  Now keep in mind that all this time, I'm continuing to walk as much as I can, often 10,000 steps a day.  But I'm definitely in pain, and limping, using a walking stick Bart found for me, and getting seats on the train and tram, as I look handicapped as well as grey-haired.  I can no longer stand on tiptoe on my right leg.  It just doesn't work.  It doesn't really hurt, it just won't support me.
    So we gimped to Canadian Medical, which is a good walk from the train station, and down a long hill across a bridge.  The Doc there says it looks like the tendon has ruptured, and although they do some surgeries on site, this one needs a hospital.  He tells us to go to the closest hospital to our home, which he claims is Bulovca, in Prague 8.  It is two longish train rides away.  We get there, go to the wrong building, are sent upstairs, are sent back downstairs and across the street, where we wait quite awhile with no one really speaking English anywhere.  Then we are sent back to the first building and back upstairs to the "Foreign Office" where we must show our passports and credit card and make a good faith payment up front.  Then back to the other building.  Finally we see a doctor or NP or something, and she speaks English.  Great!  No.  Awful.  She asks where we live - Prague 10, we say.  Oh no, you can't be seen here.  This is not the closest hospital!  You need to go to the University Hospital in Vinohrady.  And stop walking on your injured leg.  Bart goes back to the foreign office and fights hard to get our money back, while I call an Uber.
    We finally got to the Orthopedic Trauma Center in Vinohrady.  Again, the receptionist and most nurses don't have any English.  One nurse does, and says I have to walk two blocks, uphill, to the foreign office to make a payment.  I protest that I've been told to stop walking on the injured leg.  She says to walk slowly.  The top of my head is about to shoot up to the ceiling, like Vesuvius.  Smoke pours from my ears and nose.  I can't speak.  Bart takes my passport and goes off on his own to the foreign office.  The secretary there speaks English, and is just fine with Bart taking care of everything.  Now it is almost 4 pm, or 16:00 as they say everywhere in this country.  I get to see a Doctor.  He speaks English.  He says I need surgery, but maybe I can't have it today because it is late in the day, and there are not free surgery rooms.  He gives Bart a prescription for crutches, has a man in white wrap my leg in a cast, and sends us home.  The first Lekarna, or drug store for prescriptions that they send Bart to is closed at 4 pm, because a 4 day holiday begins tomorrow.  oh oh.  The second Lekarna has crutches.  They will be fine for his 5'6" wife, because they are "adjustable".  And so they are!  For humans 5'10" or taller.  I can barely fit them under my arms, and have the good foot up on tiptoe.  But now that Lekarna is closed, so we call an Uber and drag ourselves home.  Can you imagine if I were by myself for all this?  I would be heading for the airport.
  The cast is hard down the front of my leg, and forces my toes down to shorten the tendon in back.  Then it has gauze bandages wrapping it around my leg.  No way I can stand on that leg now.  But I was walking around with it earlier today!  It feels like they just made it much worse, not better.  When the Uber gets us home, I have to get down on my knees or sit and scootch to get myself up the outside steps and up two sets of indoor stairs to get up to our apartment.  I'm afraid to use the crutches, and barely pick up the good foot off the ground.  I keep cheating and resting the toes of my bad foot on the ground for balance.  Now I can hardly get to the cramping calf muscle in the night.  Oh, I'm so happy.  The frustration of not being able to be understood or know what anyone is saying to us is beyond belief.  We try using the Google Translate, and the SayHi apps on our phone.  We hold the phone up to someone speaking Czech and push the microphone button.  They stop talking, or try to take the phone to look at it, and the microphone gives up.  Or they talk fast and the app can't understand them.  It works a bit better when we speak English to it and it spits out an approximation of Czech.

  Next morning.  Back to the hospital by Uber.  Back to the Trauma Center for Orthopedic injuries. I am prepped for surgery, which includes an ekg in the exam room open to two other exam rooms with the men in white outfits and other medical staff wandering around, but I have to strip to the waist and lie down for the ekg.  Bart was also there, but couldn't do anything to help.  I'm put in a hospital gown and sent back out.  Finally I get the word the surgery room is ready.  The orderly stands out past the foot of my bed, pretending to scratch his ear, and tipping his head to the side to look up my gown - I swear it is true.  I cross my casted leg over the other and glare at him.  He comes up to the side of the bed and wheels me out to the surgery room.  Then he helps someone else hold a blanket over me while I take off the gown.  I hate him.  I hate this.  I want to cry.  But crying sometimes causes an asthma attack if I am very upset.  Once before, when I had surgery two years ago in Rochester, I woke up in recovery in the middle of an asthma attack, and they were scrambling to get me a nebulizer treatment.  I told this anesthetist about that, so they would be ready, just in case.  But I forgot to bring my puffer with me.  I'm trying to stay calm.  I'm wheeled into the surgircal room, but instead of putting me out, they move around, talking in Czech, getting everything ready while I stare into the big round light above my head and try to breathe calmly.  Please just put me under.  Finally, they put me out of my misery, and when I wake up .... I'm having an asthma attack.  I can hear myself wheezing and gasping for breath.  My whole body is shaking, down to the good foot.  I'm barely conscious.  Some man in white comes and yells at me, asking where is my medicine.  I tell him "nebulizer."  He apparently went looking for Bart, and he searched through my purse, but couldn't find the puffer.  That wouldn't have worked well anyhow, as I'm in full-blown attack now and need the nebulizer.  I'm in and out of consciousness, shaking, gasping for air.  Finally I get a mask and white smoke - asthma treatment.  I pass out again.
   Later I woke up in a room with 6 beds, and a glass wall looking out to the nurse's station.  I'm in ICU.  Later that day the pain got so bad I was going into shock again, crying and shaking.  I was trying to breathe through it, and keep quiet.  But they came with drugs, and then again with a shot in my thigh muscle as well as the iv drugs.  I asked for a bedpan.  No.  Nurse points at the iv.  Really?  I can't pee because of the iv?  Ok then.  An hour later I asked again.  No!!!  The nurse got my chart and pointed out the list of pain meds I'm on.  I point down my body and say bed pan? again.  Oh, not bad pain, but bed pan.  Yes, I can have that.  She then taught me a Czech word starting with an L for bed pan.  I asked for my phone from my husband,  He can't come see me.  It is evening.  I ask and ask for my phone.  Finally they bring it.  I text Bart.  He has not been told anything about the outcome of the surgery, only that I'm in ICU and he should go home, as he can't see me.  Can you imagine?  Your spouse is out of surgery but in ICU for an unknown complication and you are sent away with no information.
    I used the phone again for translation, but was not allowed to charge it up when it went dead.  The next morning no Dr. told me anything about what had happened.  One Dr. came in the room and felt my toes to check for circulation, and then went away.  No English.  It is a Country-wide Holiday.  I'm sent to a regular room in the afternoon.  The nurses don't speak English, and can't understand my request for a bed pan.  I use the Czech word I learned in ICU.  They don't understand.  I show them the word on my phone.  Nope.  Finally they give me a different word for bed pan, something that starts with an "m."  No ice for my ankle, Long wait for pain meds which are more shots in the thigh. I'm in a room with two other women, but there are no curtains for privacy, nor even any tracks in the ceiling where curtains would run.  My only privacy is the blanket.  OH, and no toilet paper, or any way to wash my hands.  I'm so glad Bart had suggested I bring a small purse sized pack of tissues with me, and I have hand sanitizer in my purse.  I hadn't eaten the day before, and had no breakfast or lunch this day.  Dinner was apricot dumplings sprinkled in powdered sugar and a glass of water, no ice.

Terrible night, with Nurse Ratchett.  When I try to speak to her, in English or Czech she just shakes her head, says Ne veem (I don't understand), turns and walks away.  

Breakfast is two rolls and some jam.

Home with better crutches, to spend my summer on the couch with my ankle up and iced.  Incision looks gruesome.  

The good leg had to be wrapped as well, to keep it from swelling.  Also I have to give myself injections around the bellybutton area every night to prevent deep vein thrombosis.  The landlady's cat, Poosaar, comes to visit and inspect the apartment whenever we leave the door open to the hall.
The landlady had a wheelchair stored in the basement near where we store our bikes.  Bart asked if we could borrow it.  Yes!  I also ordered a knee scooter from England, but as of August 1 it hasn't arrived yet.
As of August 1, our total expense including dr. visits, hospitalization, medication and medical supplies has been $1500.  That is not a typo.

The cobblestone streets are murder on the wheelchair's wheels.  Eventually one front wheel came apart, but that is another story - as it happened on a road trip through Moravia in eastern Czechia.