Michael: A Rookie Mistake

This present moment
Stop and enjoy the wonder
Of every breath.

Sunday, October 1, 2017

It’s 7 p.m. and I’m sitting here in the community hospital in David trying to pass the time until I can call Kimme to see if she made it home. Our neighbor and landlord, Luzmilla, was kind enough to bring her to the hospital and wait while she visited with me for a few hours before driving her home.

I’ve never spent the night in a hospital before and spending the night here in a room with 5 other men of various ages and in various stages of illness, none of whom speak my language, I suspect isn’t going to be very restful.

The accident that brought me here was totally my fault and was completely avoidable. I made the rookie mistake of looking down to clip into my bicycle pedals when I was having trouble clipping in. my few seconds of inattentiveness was enough to cause me not to see the slight curve in the road and by the time I did look up I was headed down a short embankment onto the dirt path a few feet below. When I hit I went over the bars and smashed my face into the ground.

Fortunately, a good Samaritan couple stopped and took me and my bike in their SUV to the local hospital in Volcan. I’ve face planted once before so I presumed I was bleeding pretty profusely and wasn’t a very pretty sight. Whoever you people are, I hope I can pick your car out in town someday and properly thank you.

The local hospital in our small town in Volcan is only about a year old and isn’t completely operational yet. When I came in on a Thursday afternoon there wasn’t any staff that could help me so they called an ambulance to come and transport me to the hospital in David. They did take a couple of x-rays that they put on a disc for me to take with me. They also secured my bike in a locked storage area.

The ombudsman, who spoke decent English, was a very kind older man who came through every now and then to check up on me. Otherwise there was no attempt to clean me up or deal with my injuries. I did ask for a cloth and ice packet which they were kind enough to provide and I held that against my face until the ambulance arrived.

Kimme has been through a few accidents with me, and like me, she stays pretty calm through these events. When she came to the hospital and I told her they were going to transport me to David, but that the ambulance wouldn’t be here anytime soon, she went back home and gathered up a few things then returned with our neighbor and landlord, Luzmilla, who was kind enough to drive her back and forth since we don’t have a car.
While she was gone a man in a casual shirt walked in whom I presumed was the ambulance driver. I asked if he could wait a minute until my wife arrived. He didn’t mind. What struck me about him was what I would call a typical Panamanian encounter. When he walked into the hospital he was carrying a brand new fan belt which I presumed was for the ambulance.

After Kimme arrived he wheeled me out to the ambulance. There I was joined by an indigenous woman with her sick child and a nurse. There wasn’t space for Kimme to ride with us so she and Luzmilla would follow and meet me at the hospital. That was my first ambulance ride.

At the hospital I was quickly taken into the trauma center where a very calm and young doctor who spoke very good English, Dr. DeGrasso, would clean and stitch me up. This wasn’t the first time I ever had stitches, but it was the first time I could remember. The other time I had stitches was for a very small gash right in my eyebrow when I was 4 years old. I have no memory of that, but I know I’ll never forget this time round. Nor will I forget my first ambulance ride nor my first over night hospital stay.

AARP and others are sporadically reminding me that new experiences help keep us young, but just like any other cliché or pearls of wisdom, there are exceptions, and I’m not so sure all these surprising first this accident has me going through is all that much of a youth elixir. But its been interesting. That’s for sure.