Normally, I write about my own adventures, and only mention Ariel when he tags along. This is mostly because Ariel goes to boring and/or miserable places for the most part, and when he does go somewhere cool, he spends every waking moment in the Embassy or eating at groovy restaurants (which he tells me about over the phone at the precise moment when I've had Cheetoes (unfulfillingly) for lunch). But he never goes and sees/does anything cool.
Until this (next-to) last trip. The trip itself was to an rather uneventful location: Amman, Jordan. Ariel's been there once before, and true to form, he never plays the tourist (i.e. he doesn't bring me back anything nice). But he did have an adventure. In the airport Sunday night, he was carrying a big bag of heaviness with his thumb hooked under the strap, and the bag slipped off, pulling his thumb in the wrong direction backwards. He heard a melodious ripping sound that came not from the bag but from inside his hand. So the following day, he did what you do when you've ripped off your thumb and can no longer bend it -- he went to work. As the hand turned black through the day, his coworkers advised him to see the doctor. Not the embassy medical unit -- no, he went to the Arab Medical Centre -- yep, a Jordanian hospital.
Now, I have to admit that as far as Middle Eastern Countries go, Jordan is our #1 Arabic-speaking ally and is fairly Western, but let's be honest here -- when you think of a hospital in the Middle East, you ironically don't picture Mount Sinai.
This was how the conversation went over the phone (edited for brevity and humor):
Ariel: "The guys from the office took me to a Jordanian hospital."
Me: "Did they remove your thumb?"
Ariel (ignoring me -- the secret of our marriage): "They took an x-ray to see if I broke any bones."
Me: "Then did they remove your thumb?"
Ariel: "It turns out I ripped 2 of the 4 ligaments that hold your thumb in place, but didn't break anything."
Me: "So they removed your thumb?"
Ariel: "The doctor said I had what they call 'Goalkeeper's Thumb'-- it's a football injury."
Me (disappointed): "Football? So they didn't remove your thumb."
As you can see, Ariel came home with his x-rays in a groovy envelope marked with Arabic -- making it official. But no thumb in a jar (which I'm certain they would have confiscated in customs -- which would have made an even cooler story).
The bad news is, that as a result, Ariel learned to swallow pills. Yes, my grown-up husband couldn't swallow pills without gagging and spitting them back out. This is why it's by the grace of God alone my husband does not have malaria -- because he can't swallow his anti-malarial medication. But now, he learned on this trip (a sure sign that there was no Internet in the hotel room -- he must have been really bored). The reason this is bad when, yes, this is technically good news is that now I have nothing even meager of his to balance out my own craziness. When faced with potential mockery of my terrible phobia of human beings, I used to be able to retort, "Yeah, sure I'm deathly afraid to talk on the phone to the pizza delivery boy, but, um, you can't even swallow pills! So yeah!" Now, I got nothin'.
Just for fun, I added the word "kafir" in Arabic on the x-ray for a bit of authenticity. Yes, I have a list of weird neuroses, but can you write "Infidel" in Arabic? I didn't think so.
2 comments:
By way of correction I only damaged 1 of the 4 ligaments that are in my thumb and the doctor called it the "best" worst case. I have about another 4 weeks to go before it should be "fully" recovered.
I didn't know what to expect at the Arab Medical Unit. They staff was plentiful, the doctors/nurses courteous, and the ones talking to me did so in very good English. I had to wait less time to be seen than in an English hospital (with an appointment) and the services were pretty cheap (total of 45 JD [$63]), and I have no complaints about how it went.
I was actually in Athens, en route to Amman, when the accident occurred. I only had one day at the embassy so I did everything I could to finish my tasks first and then went to the medical unit at the embassy who directed me to see the AMU.
While I can't sufficiently explain the mental "uh oh" that occurred when I felt things ripping inside my hand, believe me, the ripping was completely forgotten in the wellspring of pain which quickly bubbled to the forefront of my mind, washing away all thoughts of strange noises. Once I could walk/see again, I remembered and thought that I should probably get that looked at sooner or later. Am I crazy because I was more interested in finishing what I came to do than have my hand examined? I don't know, but when you have a job to do, if you're not dead, get it done.
Wow. Ariel, you realize being from the south and all, you could have just said, "Get 'er done" and we would have all known exactly what had happened!
Jenny, I'm with you. I would have loved to have seen a thumb in a jar. Way cooler.
Post a Comment