Oh, thank God for free American health care.

View from the hill

When I told my sister yesterday that I fell while running, she laughed at me. Cruel, I know. But she was thinking of that stretch of time a few years ago when I stabbed myself, flipped over my bike handlebars and landed on my head, and Nick broke my rib, and perhaps another incident, all within a month or two. I guess it didn't seem that long ago to her and she still thinks I have a death wish.

Anyway. I did. I was running around Philopappou Hill like usual. It's pretty dry up there now and very rocky, and on a little downhill stretch I tripped and had a long, hard fall. Somehow I ended up with swollen, puffy knees and a thigh (as if I needed more puffiness there!). I staggered all the way home, about 25 minutes, glad that my pants were at least hiding the blood running down my leg, but not so much the dirt that covered over half my body and wouldn't wipe off.

I cleaned it all out with the shower head, and discovered this strange, deep, puncture-like hole in my knee. It's pretty gross. And fascinating; I spent lots of time yesterday gazing into it, trying to figure out why it was there and what was inside. And why it kept oozing. By the time I finished some meetings and was able to concentrate on it, the pharmacies were closed, and the one doctor I knew of nearby refused to speak English to me on the phone (jerk!). I was frustrated that I didn't know a few of the vital words I needed in Greek for that conversation.

Neosporin and bandaids were about all the supplies I had on hand, although after applying I read the Neosporin tube and it said "consult a doctor before use if you have ... deep or puncture wounds..." I wasn't sure I wanted to brave the public hospital just yet, and besides I didn't know which one was open that night, so I just hoped last night that it wouldn't get infected and tried not to let panic set in. :) Did I mention I couldn't walk by last night?

Anyway, to make a long, painful story short, I was asking a friend last night if she would still be my friend if I got gangrene, lost my leg, and ended up begging on the sidewalk in Omonia, and she told me that they had a visiting team with a doctor on it. She works for ITeams' refugee ministry here, and said that this woman had actually done a minor "surgery," as she described it, on her that morning. The prospect of a nice American lady fixing me up sounded almost blissful, minus the pain part, in comparison to some of the other options I have available to me in this country!!!

So this morning, I got up and hopped/staggered/limped to the refugee center, occasionally gasping when I took a wrong step and my leg felt like someone had just shot me in the knee. I waited for the doctor to arrive, and it was like I was at home. She cleaned out my wound, called it "impressive" even, and gave me everything I need - peroxide to clean it out regularly, neosporin (guess it's ok to fill my puncture wound with it), big bandaids, and antibiotics, because it was starting to get infected already.

And I was so thankful for this seemingly simple solution. It was a big deal to me to have it taken care of so easily, when nothing is easy here, the medical system is quite plainly traumatic, and I don't have a grasp of the right terms in the language. I am laid up for a couple of days, but I have plenty of sympathetic attention (hee hee :) and I have enormous amounts of relief to have it taken care of and have everything I needed provided, free, in English, and by a nice Christian lady who wrote "God bless" on my antibiotics bottle. :) SO thankful that God made that easy today.