Second time now we've spent hours of a vacation at the local hospital.

On Monday, we were doing our second dive of the day at Old Blue.  Nice
dive, found 3 slender filefish right at the end.  We emerged from the
sea and as usual, I helped Janna get her footing through the rocks and
tricky slipperly ironshore ledge.  It's not that I'm more nimble
footed, but I'm a bit more able to bear the weight of the tank and 12
lbs of weights on my back than she is.

Made it past the tricky stuff, next was just a simple few steps up a
little slope covered with dead staghorn coral.  This is where it got
nasty.  Janna's right foot slipped a bit, got her unsteady, and the
whole package went falling.  Worse, she sort of twisted as she went
down.  I was left with a screaming Janna on the ground, me not knowing
whether she hit her head or injured her knee or ankle.  We soon found
out it was the third option, the ankle.

Any movement caused more screaming.  Clearly it was going to be an
adventure getting her up  the slope and into the truck.  I got her
gear and mine loaded, then pondered whether I should leave her and try
for help at the hospital, a 45 minute drive away, or wait for someone
to come by and render some assistance.  Did I mention that we were the
only ones at the dive site?  That's one of the great things about
Bonaire, having dive sites to yourself, but it can be a bit lonely
when things hit the fan.

Finally some other people showed up and seeing Janna writhing in agony
on the beach quickly ran over to help.  Three people made it a lot
easier to get her loaded in the back seat of the truck, and away I
went to the hospital, hearing screams everytime I went over a pothole.

Dealing with hospitals in your own country can be daunting enough, but
let me tell you that it really sucks when your in a foreign country,
even one as "first world" as Bonaire.  Heck, they don't even have
signs in English.  What's this world coming to?

The hospital told me to take her across the street to the clinic.  I
got them to bring out a wheelchair, and we went to wait for the doc.
Doc asked "does this hurt" several times, each time getting a loud
scream in return.  No translation required.

He sent us back to the hospital to get X-rays.  They looked fine to
me, but doc saw a little hairline crack.  Not enough to separate the
bones, thankfully, but a crack nonetheless.  Unfortunately the
"surgeon" who could cast her ankle was out and they needed the
swelling to go down anyway.  He sent me over to the medical supply
store to buy her some crutches, then wrapped her ankle for a little
support.

Now the fun part.  We were staying at Den Laman, which only has units
on the second and third floors.  No elevator.  Doc said stairs were
absolutely out of the question.  Great.

So now it's after 6 p.m. and I needed to find a ground floor room
ASAP.  Unfortunately most of the hotel offices close around 6 p.m., so
my choices were limited to the larger resorts.  Plus I wanted a room
with TV and A/C in the same place.  Lots of places on the island only
A/C the bedroom and put the TV in the living room.  Since Janna's
vacation was henceforth going to be limited to TV and reading, I
figured I could at least try for comfort.

Plaza is too damn big.  They had an open ground floor room literally a
half-mile from the parking lot.  Harbor Village had a large group
arriving Thursday that had requested all the ground floor rooms and I
didn't feel like having to move yet again later in the week.  They
suggested Divi, but I have a grudge against Divi after losing too much
in their Casino.  I also have issues with Buddy from a former visit.
So I went to my old friend Captain Don's, site of my first trip to the
island.  It's a bit rustic, but they were able to get us in a deluxe
ocean view hotel room sort of accomodation that had exactly what we
wanted: good A/C and a TV.

Unfortunately when we tried to get Janna to the room, which was a bit
of a walk from the parking lot, we found out that she's not too good
on crutches.  Late at night by this point, I had a crying woman on my
hands and I was feeling pretty helpless.  Every time she moved her
ankle a bit, she'd cry out in pain.

For some reason, docs here just do not give anything for pain.  I had
read something on Bonairetalk a while back about someone with a really
bad tooth problem that would assuredly have gotten him some Vicodin
back home.  Not in Bonaire.  Heck, in the U.S., you can get a doc to
prescribe you Vicodin for stubbing your toe.  Not in Bonaire.  Not for
a broken ankle, at least.

So I figured I could motivate her to crawl on her hands and knees.  I
started crawling, said "follow me".  But after a few steps, her knees
hurt.  Tried putting her booties under her knees, but that didn't
help.

Fortunately we were situated right at the loading/trash area for the
restaurant and I had spotted a dolly there.  I got someone from the
restaurant and he came out with a cart that worked even better.
Loaded Janna on the cart and delivered our room service to the room.
I got some pizzas, two very large beers, and a bottle of wine, and we
called it a night.

Next morning it was time to see the "surgeon" for the cast.  We didn't
have an appointment, were just told to come in the next day and that
the doc should get in around 8.  We slept in a bit, then I ran into
town to the medical supply place to rent a wheelchair.  I wasn't about
to borrow the room service cart for the entire trip and crutches just
suck and would likely cause her to fall and break something else.

Medical supply place did have wheelchairs for rent, but they had to
put one together that had the foot rests.  They told me to come back
in a hour.  So I decided to take a drive back up to Old Blue to see if
I could find what happened to her mask.  When I finally was able to
unload our dive gear, we realized that her prescription mask didn't
make it back with us.  Even worse, this was her backup prescription
mask since the other one was dropped at Karpata the day before and
shattered (that one was my fault :).  No mask.  Losing a prescription
mask and a backup prescription mask on the same trip must be some kind
of record.

I made it back to the medical supply place after an hour only to be
told that the wheelchair I wanted had a flat tire and they had sent it
out to get fixed.  I waited around a while, then they told me they
would deliver it to Capt. Don's within the hour.  Sure enough, they
came with the wheelchair, but had forgotten the footrests.  She went
back for the footrests and 20 minutes later, we were on our way to the
hospital for a cast.

When we got to the hospital, we were told that the surgeon had just
left.  At that point, I sort of started to lose it.  I asked her,
quite firmly, to please call the doctor in because I didn't want her
ankle to get any worse and we would have been there earlier if it
wasn't for the craziness of trying to get the damn wheelchair, and
what kind of doc only works for 3 hours a day?

I still have some lawyer in me, and managed to convince her to page
the doc.  He came in, looked at the X-rays, explained that he couldn't
do a permanent cast because of the upcoming flying, that if there was
swelling in flight, we needed a cast that we could cut off.  I then
held Janna down while she screamed through his setting the cast, he
gave us a nice note to explain to the airlines that she was capable of
flying without undue risk, and we were finally done.  She'll follow up
with her doc when we get home, probably to get a more permanent cast
that she can actually walk on, or get surgery if the bone isn't
healing as nicely as it should.  Fun, fun.

Wheelchair people are going out of town on Friday, so they want me to
return the wheelchair by Friday at noon if we want our deposit back.
Hah.  I'll try to explain to them that I need it through Saturday
morning, that they can pick it up at Capt. Don's, and if we don't get
our deposit back, I'll try to get it through insurance.

Of course the Den Laman people were less than gracious.  We had
prepaid and that was it.  So I'm typing this from my "office" at Den
Laman right now and I'm keeping my camera here in case I actually
decide to finally go diving again this trip.  Having to pay for a
second hotel room cost me another $1,000, and it will be real fun
trying to convince the insurance (trip insurance and/or DAN preferred
plan) that it was medically necessary to get a ground floor hotel
room.  But like I said, I still have a bit of lawyer left in me.  I'll
fully document the stairs-only situation at Den Laman.

I'll also eventually take up with the Den Laman owners how shitty is
to insist on keeping our money for a place we can't use, especially
since they're slow right now and it's not like they had to turn away
anyone for lack of available rooms.  Sure, we have a non-refundable
prepaid room, but can't they have a heart?  That's not the sort of
treatment that will ever bring me back here, so they're going to lose
out on my future business as well as the future business of everyone
else that I can dissuade from going there thanks to the power of the
internet.  But I'll save that for later.  Right now, I'm trying to
salvage what's left of our "vacation".

Played some volleyball yesterday with the staff at Habitat, one of the
Harley shop guys, and Moogie, the only live musician on the island.
That was fun.  I'm still going to try to get in a couple of dives
before we leave, at least to get some much needed practice with the
105mm lens and try out my new extended viewfinder, but with the luck
I've been having on this trip, I'm likely to flood it.

That's all for now.  Got to bring lunch to a disabled woman, then
decide if I want to get my camera wet or not.

And they call this paradise.