Crash, Bang, Prang!

As has been previously noted, I drive like an old lady, and am generally pretty careful when it comes to maneouvring metal boxes on wheels. So it is with some embarrassment that I present this story:

The Day I Crashed My Car.

First of all, don't get excited: it happened almost two years ago, and, as you can probably spot by the dates on these here blogicles, I'm not dead. Secondly, it wasn't 'my' car, it was a rental. A crummy little Toyota Echo.

Here's what happened. I had dropped BetterArf and Offspring off at their various schools, and was returning home. It was about 7.30 am. The weather that day was a little bit strange. There were clouds on the horizon, and the sun was just rising and trying to break through the clouds.

I was driving up the Gardens perimeter road. It had no speed bumps at that time (they appeared about a month after my accident). I was probably doing a little over 60 kph. I was completely unprepared for the sun on the horizon right in front of me bursting out from behind a cloud just as I rounded a bend in the road. I was completely blinded. I hit the brakes of the car, and then I heard a loud











BANG







The car seemed to be moving backwards, then sideways, and then it threatened to tip over on its side. Then it stopped moving. I looked up: the windscreen had shattered into a million pieces, most of which were inside the car, and quite a few inside my shoes. The passenger-side door pillar was bent inwards. Looking around, I saw that the car was parked at right angles to the road, perfectly positioned between two low hedges on the central reservation. Parked on the road opposite me was the obstacle that I had so definitely hit. A flatbed truck belonging to Messrs Al Naboodah. Why was it parked there? They were pruning bloody trees.

I staggered out of the car. No signs of blood. No signs of personal damage at all, in fact, except it was a bit hard to breathe. A car drove past and screeched to a halt. It was a friend of mine who lives close by. She called the cops and the ambulance. After what seemed like an age, a police car showed up. The guy just could not understand why I had rammed this truck with my puny Echo. He awarded me the blame (shukran habibi: I'm bloody dying here!).

Then the ambulance turned up and took me to Rashid Hospital. Well this was fun - I'd never been inside an ambulance before, and this one had magic windows that changed from clear to opaque at the flick of a switch.

On arrival at the hospital they all rushed around like crazy people and then, having established that I probably wasn't going to die straight away, they put me on a gurney and parked me in a corridor. I was sent for an x-ray or ten. And then back to the gurney. A grinning doctor comes up to me and says I've fractured my sternum (breastbone). He wants to keep me in for 24 hours. I protest, and he enigmatically asks me if I have life insurance.

So I'm on this gurney for a few hours while they try to find me a bed. A junior doctor appears and tells me I'll be getting 'nil by mouth', but it's ok because I'll be on this fabulous nutrient drip, and really, it's much better than the food. I am a bit upset. Because, not only was it my first time in an ambulance, it was also my first time as a hospital in-patient, and I really wanted to try the food!

Eventually they find me a bed in a ward full of sick people (ewww it was horrible). I was dying for a fag, but it was Ramadan. Oh, and hospitals are a bit funny about that kind of thing. I get changed into the uniform, and, disappointingly, nobody checks the cleanliness of my underwear. They give me some humungous painkillers and I have a kip. About teatime, BetterArf shows up with some reading matter - a couple of books and what looks suspiciously like a porn mag. It turns out to be FHM, but the cover pic is just astonishing!

Visiting time over, the other inmates get given food - looks like a nice biryani-type thing. I get nothing, and then I realise I'm not hooked up to a drip. When the guys come to collect the empties, they bring me a 'European' meal - grey soup, cold greasy chicken leg, mashed potatoes, peas, an apple and some orange juice. I realise I've eaten nothing all day, and this meal is certainly welcome. I'm not asking anybody about the nutrient drip.

I do a little reading, and then try to get out of bed to use the bathroom. I cannot do it. The forces involved in pushing yourself up all connect in your sternum. I summon a nurse who helps me get vertical, and decide that I will never lie down again. I'm ok while I'm standing or sitting in a normal chair, but being horizontal is just too much. Time passes, though, and I'm ready for a horizontal sleep. It's about ten pm. I struggle into bed, shut my eyes and start to drift off, and am totally horrified when the noise and population levels in the ward start to increase. It seems that because it is Ramadan, they have a late visiting session that goes on till midnight. Bloody hell, somebody give me a beer.

Next day I'm up at six, and breakfast arrives at seven - it was a chopped-up boiled egg, minus the yolk. Yukk. Cold toast, etc. I'm told I have to wait for the doctor, who'll be swinging by at about eleven. When he comes and has finished his inspection, I ask him what he meant about insurance. 'Oh, nothing', he says. 'Just that in cases like yours people sometimes have heart attacks and die, so it's better if you're already in the hospital'. Ah, thanks a lot.

Hey ho. They let me out at about one o'clock. And just in case you're interested, it takes two weeks for your sternum to repair itself, and during that time, getting horizontal and getting up again are absolutely agonising. Even when you have planet-sized painkillers.

Cured!

Didn't know I was ill didya? Well, I wasn't ill exactly, but I was suffering from a bit of a problem.

Three nights ago as I was getting ready for bed, I discovered the sudden appearance of what could well have been a third testicle (or a tumour of course - I'm not one to look on the bright side generally). I went to the doctor's the next morning and he said he reckoned it was an abscess. He said it would grow rapidly for a few days, probably hurt like hell and then explode. If I was lucky I would be able to get to the doctor when it had ripened, and he would lance it.

I was told to visit the clinic daily to have a magnesium dressing applied. This morning, the nurse said that the doc wanted to inspect the progress of my new toy, but he was working the evening shift so could I come back later. Okey dokey. I trotted down there at about five pee emm, and the doc was disappointed that the thing wasn't bigger and more painful. He said he still thought it was definitely an abscess, but wanted to get a second opinion. He tried to phone a specialist at Rashid Hospital's Emergency Department to see what could be done. Nobody was answering the phone though, so my doc asked me to come back or phone in an hour or two. I gave the doc my number just in case he felt inclined to use it, and retired to Jebel Ali Club (which is conveniently located next door to the clinic), for a pint and some food.

I was just starting on my second pint when the doc called. He'd spoken to the specialist, who was willing to have a look at the thing this evening, and possibly drain it tomorrow morning. I started to protest a little bit about the timing of it (I didn't tell him that I wanted to watch Liverpool v Chelski later that night), and the doc said fine, I could wait 28 days for an outpatient appointment, but I might be seriously unwell by then.

So I abandon the second pint (absolutely unheard of!), whizz round to the clinic to get the reference letter from the doc, grab a cab, pick up BetterArf en route, and head off to Rashid Hospital. Rashid H is in the centre of Dubai, sometimes a 25 minute drive from Jebel Ali, but on this occasion an agonising 40 minutes.

We wander into Accident and Emergency, which was fairly crowded but quiet. Not much like ER or Boston Whatnot - no drunks or junkies, no fighting or abuse. Just calm. And there were 3 or 4 cops around the place (there is actually a mini police station at Rashid Hospital).

I get to see the specialist fairly quickly (within 40 minutes), he has a grope of my lump, declares it to be an abscess and says he will drain it straightaway. I had to wait a wee while until a bed was available in the treatment room, and then it was all systems go. First of all they sprayed vast amounts of a freezing spray onto the scrotum, and then I think they injected a little local anaeasthetic. Then he made a little cut and squeezed all the goo out.

'Khalas' he says 'all done!', pats me on the chest and disappears, leaving another guy to clean up the mess. It was all over in about five minutes. But then I had to hold a gauze pad onto the wound until it stopped bleeding. The other guy kept coming back every five minutes to check if the bleeding had stopped. It hadn't. After about twenty minutes of this, the specialist came back and did something that seemed to stem the flow, and then they tried a few dozen alternative methods of trying to bandage the thing. It's a bit of a tricky location to get anything to grip firmly, as I'm sure you can imagine.

Eventually I'm fixed up, given a prescription for about a hundred painkillers a day (codeine I think), and shuffle off to find BetterArf, who is mightily relieved that I'm not dead.

So I've got rid a lump that didn't hurt, and now I've got a groin that hurts like @#!&.

An aside - I was supposed to be meeting a friend of mine. He's an exiled South African who has lived in Hollywood, is now based in Australia, and spends eleven months of the year travelling the world painting Impressionist paintings. In short, a natural Chelski fan. I called him when I was on the way to the doctor's to say something had cropped up and I had to go somewhere but I would try to get back in time for the match. He was a bit concerned, but it's kinda hard to explain in a brief phone call. As soon as I got out of A & E (the hospital one, not the booze shop), I called him again, explained I'd just had a little operation, and was returning to Jebel Ali ASAP. He said 'oh man, they're not showing it live down there - I'm at Scarlett's in the Emirates Towers - kick off's in ten minutes'.

I could have made it, but both BetterArf and Heroic Self were a bit tired, so we decided to be sensible and head off home. And then stay up till gone midnight writing this silly article.

Something Positive

So here's a happy little story about Dubai's excellent Government medical services. I have one or two fairly chronic medical conditions that require a constant supply of prescription drugs (actually you can buy them over the counter, at about three times the price than at the clinic pharmacy).

The concept of repeat prescriptions is unknown here, so until recently I've had to visit the doctor every month. Until I had a bit of a rant and the doc said I could have a three-month script. Result!!!

I had to visit the clinic on another matter the other day, and really did not have time to wait for an hour in a crowded waiting room. So I phoned for an appointment. I turned up ten minutes ahead of time, had my weight, temp and beep checked, and was seen by the doctor within ten minutes. Much to the chagrin of one guy in the waiting room who was muttering loudly about bloody English getting preferential treatment. (He was doing this on Arabic so I couldn't answer back).

Anyhoo, the doctors are good and thorough, the hospitals don't have massive long waiting lists, and the cost is reasonable.

What happens is you pay about Dhs 300 a year for a health card. This entitles you to discounted rates on doctor visits (Dhs 40 per visit as opposed to Dhs 100 if you don't have a health card), and free hospital in-patient treatment.

They recently introduced charges for tests, which is a total bummer if you need an MRI scan - that costs Dhs 400!

And they are talking about replacing the health card system with an insurance-based one. Nobody seems to know how that's supposed to work yet.