Chapter 5: Medical Globetrotting

Lusiadas Hospital was a short drive away. I had never been inside an ambulance, and it was fascinating to see this big red one all decked out with every tool needed for emergency resuscitation. The tall bombeiro took the wheel, while the short one sat next to my gurney in the main compartment, armed with his rudimentary English plus Google Translate to carry on jovial conversation. On arrival, they stood by my side for an hour as the new hospital handled paperwork, attending to and advocating for me like they would a sister. Finally, when a Lusiadas nurse started to move me and my agonizing leg onto a hospital gurney, the tall bombeiro who had tried the same back at Santa Maria stepped in front of her and tsk’d protectively: “No, she is good at this, let her do it herself!” I loved them. I have never felt so genuinely sad about saying goodbye to people I just met. But it was such a relief to be at the new hospital and embarking on the care I needed.

Relaxed, confident and affable, the sexagenarian orthopedic surgeon Dr. Braga took one look at my x-rays and CT scans and pronounced this “serious but simple to fix”. He casually snapped photos of the images with his smart phone, explaining to me with cautious English but obvious relish how he planned to repair the clean break. When Eirik arrived, Dr. Braga guessed he was Portuguese and then assumed French. (Eirik seamlessly fits in anywhere and I secretly hate him for it.) When Dr. Braga exclaimed with relief that French was much easier for him, we switched channels. He told me that he would see me in surgery tomorrow and to eat everything I wanted for dinner, “bon appétit!” This was music to my famished ears, and with that, a full dinner tray was laid before me right there in the consult room. That evening and over the course of my stay at Lusiadas, nurses and other staff melted affectionately when they heard I was Dr. Braga’s patient. “Oh Dr. Braga, he is the best doctor ever!” they told me. And I have come to agree with them.

Although it was hard to say goodbye to Eirik that evening so that he and the kids could carry on their trip the next day without me, this was unfortunately not my first experience being treated alone in a foreign hospital. In fact, as my dear friend Heather pointed out to me, for a healthy person, I seem to make a strange habit of getting to know countries via their medical systems. In Senegal, I was treated for malaria by a doctor whose initial diagnosis was “meningitis, you’ll be dead by tomorrow”. In Thailand, I was hospitalized with dengue (break-bone) fever. I left my appendix in Paris on a short trip there many years ago, well before American surgeons used laparoscopic techniques like the French did. In the Philippines, strangers scooped me off the street with a badly sprained ankle and transported me to the nearest rural clinic. I hatched amoebas in Varanasi, India, and seriously feared I might join the pilgrims who go there to die so they can escape the cycle of reincarnation and be cremated on the Ganges. Surgery is like death in that no matter who may be there to offer support, in the end you can only go through it alone.

After dinner and goodbyes, I was wheeled to my room in Lusiadas. It was clean and spacious, the nurse-patient ratio was solid, there seemed to be a system, my hydraulic bed could morph into any position, my roommate was welcoming, and I had a wide-open view from the large picture window. I settled in with gratitude and had surgery the next afternoon, about 48 hours after my misstep in the metro. With my left leg permanently fortified by a metal plate and screws, I am now bionic.