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16 FOUR SEASONS BREEZE | AUGUST 2024 By Rhonda Louden It started out as a lovely trip. My husband Tom and I, along with our friends, went on a Mediterranean cruise followed by some days in Rome. Tom and I decided to tour the Borghese Gardens on Segways. That's where our trip was derailed. I had an accident, fell from the Segway, and broke two bones in my leg, near my ankle. When the paramedics showed up, we told the ambulance drivers we had both insurance AND money so could afford the best care. Instead, they took me to a public hospital's emergency room. I found myself in a hospital where no one spoke English. I lay suffering with a painful broken leg on a gurney with a scant one inch of padding in a hallway. The hallway was full of other people on gurneys suffering from various injuries, moaning and groaning, obviously in extreme pain like me; the hospital staff ignored everyone. Including me. For some reason, I thought Rome, like many other major tourist cities, would have good hospitals to treat tourists (and residents) who experience a medical emergency. I was wrong and learned many lessons from this incident. I stayed on that gurney with no pillows, no blankets, no support, and a broken side rail for a whopping 43 hours. I developed a bedsore on my bottom in that short time due to neglect. It took a couple hours before anyone paid attention to me. They finally brought me into a room and x-rayed my leg. The doctor temporarily set my leg — with no anesthesia. He pulled on my leg and twisted my foot back in line and then wrapped it with a splint. I saw stars from the pain and passed out. Then they cut off my pants, put me in a diaper, and rolled me back into the hallway. The doctor gave me a choice of having the surgery at that hospital and be in traction for over a week or he could install an external fixation device and I could f ly home and have the surgery in America. I chose to get out of there as soon as possible. A little before midnight, I was brought into surgery and external fixation equipment was installed into my leg and foot. I was then returned to the hallway, still in the (now wet) diaper. Thirteen hours later I finally f lagged someone down and tried to get the message across to get my doctor. No one had checked on me or even taken my temperature — nothing since surgery. I laid in the hallway on that gurney, in that wet diaper hour after hour. Finally, late the next afternoon, I was moved into a room just off the hallway that was still full of patients on gurneys. The only advantage to the room was that there was a nurse in there all the time. I tried to use my phone for translation, but it kept dying. There was no charger plug near my gurney so someone would have to take it somewhere and plug it in. I was trying to get insurance papers completed so I could leave, but my doctor was the only one who spoke English. I tried to tell the night nurse that I needed to leave by 9 am the next morning because my insurance company had arranged a travel departure plan back to the States. But I had no one at the hospital to talk to. Luckily my surgeon was helpful and filled out the forms that needed to be completed. On that form was his email address which was how I reached him when I couldn't get staff to pay attention to me. The doctor was off duty but he sent an associate A Not-So-Funny Thing Happened On My Way To The Forum Happier times