“¡Sólo cinco grapas! ¡Sólo cinco!”

I’ve had my share of medical disasters in the past—sprained ankles, stitches, scoliosis, back spasms, et cetera. But my five-month stint in Spain promised to be a time of rest and good health. I’d be walking like crazy, eating the famous Mediterranean diet and getting plenty o’ sleep. Sure, I read over the Center for Disease Control’s travel tips about mosquitoes and vaccinations, and I memorized Spain’s 911 equivalent, 112, just in case. But I never expected to make a 112 call, especially not in my third week in the country.

Sorpresa, sorpresa. I did.

I’d settled into a comfortable routine—wake up, do errands/homework, eat comida, nap, do more homework/errands, go to class, eat dinner, mess around on Facebook, go to bed. I was in the final week of the mini-course and had just one last composición to write for Ángeles’ class. No problema, ¿eh? That Tuesday morning at 11ish, after doing some serious Facebook work, I went upstairs and fixed a cup of tea to help get me motivated to write. I carefully walked down the marble stairs with the teacup, as I’d done a hundred times before, but this time was different: My slippered foot slipped out from under me, my teacup went flying and I fell down the stairs, hitting my head on four or five stairs along the way.

I lay at the bottom of the staircase in shock for about five minutes before I could call out for Ana. I wasn’t too freaked out until I reached back to feel my head and my hand came back bloody. Ay. I lost it. Sobbing and on the brink of hyperventilating, I called and called for the señora who wasn’t home. Ana and Pepe had stepped out to do errands, and Callan had gone running. I was alone. Somehow, I had the presence of mind to get up, grab some TP from the bathroom and start applying pressure to my head wound, and grab my phone from the room. I didn’t know what else to do, so I called 112.

A couple of reminders: I don’t speak Spanish too well yet, I was really disoriented and scared, and my house has zero cell reception. Bad combination. The 112 operator could not hear me, except when I twisted into one of those awful good-God-my-limbs-are-not-supposed-to-go-like-this-but-it’s-the-only-way-I-can-get-a-signal positions. When she finally could hear me, she couldn’t understand my broken attempts at Spanish. It took her ten minutes to transfer me to the “English-speaking” operator. I’m not one to criticize people who are learning to speak a second, third or fourth language, but his English was not good. If it takes a 112 operator twenty minutes to understand that someone is bleeding profusely from the head, on Ximénez de Enciso (which I spelled for him 8 times, using both Spanish and English letter names), in Sevilla (no, NOT in one of the surrounding areas!), we have a problem. I was freaked out before, but now I was freaked out and very, very angry. I was about to implode by the time the man finally sent for an ambulance. Luckily, Pepe, Callan and Ana all got home soon after I got off the phone, and they helped me tranquilitarme until the ambulance people arrived.

Y’all, never take our health care system for granted. I understand that our current system needs major fixing in that it only provides care to people who can afford it (disproportionately, White upper- or middle-class men), but I appreciate how immediately one can receive emergency care services. This was especially clear to me when I compare my American emergency-room experiences with what went down a week ago. I arrived at the hospital at 11:45, but I didn’t end up leaving until 16:30 (4:30pm). Here’s how it works in Spanish hospitals: I got out of the ambulance and went into a little consultation room. A doctor asked what happened and I explained that I fell on the stairs, hitting my head and landing on my hip. They wheeled me over to a line of hospital beds and wheel chairs, where I waited for an hour. I explained my situation to a second doctor in a consultation room and waited in line for another hour. I got x-rays; sat in line, then reviewed my (clean) x-rays in the second consultation room; and waited in yet another line until they were ready to close my head up.

When I got into the treatment room, seven or eight doctors swarmed around me and pointed toward a stiff cot, their mumbled Spanish instructions buzzing in my ears. They had me lie face down so they could sting my gash with four or five strong disinfectants. You know how in the States the doctor will give you a local anesthetic before any kind of stitches, staples or local surgery? That doesn’t happen here. With very little warning (“Okay, here come the staples!”), the medicos closed my wound with what felt like an office stapler. One of the doctors brusquely tapped my calf as I whimpered in pain, but that’s about all the comfort I got. They seemed kind of annoyed at how uncomfortable I was. One doctor kept saying, “¡Sólo cinco grapas! ¡Sólo cinco!” (like, “Come on! It’s only five staples. Only five!”) From the way they were acting, I might guess that Spanish patients have a higher pain tolerance than Americans do, but after taking Spanish meds I really don’t think so. The drugs here are way stronger—each tablet of ibuprofeno is 600mg, three times stronger than American ibuprofen! Maybe I was just at a stingy hospital.

After waiting in one more line, the consultation doctor gave me the okay to go home. By that point, I was all kinds of out of it. Wayne and Cheryl, two of our program directors, had met Callan and me at the hospital shortly after we arrived, and they made sure I got back to the house safe and sound por taxi  (Callan left at 3ish to finish her composition for Ángeles). I got home, ate my comida at 16:45 and pulled a Rip Van Winkle until dinner time. I don’t think I’ve ever loved my bed so much!

Almost two weeks later, I’m just fine; I got my staples out Wednesday, no problem, and my bruised hip healed up nicely. It’s kind of hard for me to believe that the whole thing actually happened ‘cause it was so surreal, but every once in a while people in my program will ask me how my head’s doing or whatever. I’m just relieved that my study-abroad insurance covered the whole thing and that when someone in the program had to go to the hospital it was for something relatively minor. Plus, now I’ve got an insider’s perspective on how Spanish health care works….