20 Hours in a French Hospital, woowoo

*Warning: Don’t scroll down if you’re scared of a few bloody pictures*
My karma is officially pissed off at me. Two days after officially finishing my teaching contract, I end up in the hospital in Rennes. Nothing like impeccable timing … 2 days after my insurance here enters “questionable” status, 2 days before the arrival of Jordan from the US, and 3 days before our flight to Portugal for my open-ended May travels.

I bought tickets to go to a multi-group, outdoor concert on Friday night at a nearby university; it’s called Rock n Solex and it’s a four day event featuring “solex” motorbike races among students during the day and concerts in a big tent outside at night. First we went to a friend’s apartment for aperitif hour to meet up with everyone before the concert, and then all walked over together. The atmosphere at the concert was pretty crazy –tons of people everywhere, with what seemed like very little security or control. Anyway, Andrea and I got separated from our group at the entrance because everyone was pushing, etc, and it was chaotic. So as we were “waiting in the line” or lack thereof, I apparently stepped on a broken beer bottle and got a piece of glass stuck in my left foot. It entered pretty deeply – through my Converse and everything! I immediately sat down in the grass nearby and took off my shoe, which was completely soaked in blood. Pretty gross, sorry but here are some pictures.

Beginning of the night, then an hour later ...

A first-aid staff person came over right away and tried to clean my foot off a little bit, then determined that I needed to be taken by stretcher to the medical tent. I was begging for them not to use the stretcher because that’s super embarrassing … seriously, it’s like being in the middle of MusicFest (for you Memphians) and being carried away on a stretcher = not cool. Even thought I knew like 15 people out of thousands at the concert. But it was the only option, so they carried me over to the medical tent where some friendly nursing students consoled me while waiting for the ambulance. At this point the pain honestly wasn’t too bad, so I didn’t think it was all that serious, beyond having to remove the chunk of glass and getting a few stitches. One of the workers was even kidding around with me, saying hopefully the paramedics would be cute. So two paramedics arrived (one of which was pretty cute!) and drove me to the hospital. Andrea was with me during all of this, but had left a few minutes earlier to go get my French insurance card and then met me at the hospital She’s awesome – actually flagged down cars to drive her to our place for the card and then to the hospital. Now that’s an amazing friend!

The awkwardness of the stretcher ...

I stayed in the emergency room area at the hospital for about 4 hours, and the nurses there were really friendly. I still wasn’t in too much pain, but they gave me an IV for the night, and then finally removed the piece of glass; it had entered between my big toe and the toe next to it. Here are some glory shots of me in the emergency room, once again, sorry for the gore, but it's been well-documented :

They had me spend the night at the hospital, so that the surgeon could look at my foot in the morning and determine if I needed surgery. Andrea didn’t want to go home, but the nurses finally made her leave around 4am or so. I guess I slept through the night and then woke up in the morning when the surgeon wanted to have a look at my foot. He said he didn’t think there was much damage but they needed to perform exploratory surgery anyway. Surgery in France? Sure, why not! Ugg so the surgery was one of the most uncomfortable experiences of my life … yuuuck. I had anesthesia in my leg & foot, but they explained that my foot wouldn’t be completely “dead” to touch – rather, I still had sensation in my foot but couldn’t feel pain in it. I don’t know how to accurately describe it, but it was gross being awake through all of that … ewww. So after the surgery the surgeon explained that the glass had entered deeply enough to cut a nerve and tendon; so they fixed those and then sewed the foot up.

I obviously was really disappointed with this news because it was more serious than I originally thought. What it means is two weeks on crutches without walking on the bad foot, a week of antibiotics, 10 days of a daily shot (which my roommate is giving me!) to avoid blood-clotting, a month wearing a funky orthopedic shoe (with a 3 inch heel so avoid putting my toes on the ground), and 2-3 months without running. Bummmer. But the most disappointing factor was the horrible timing with all of this. Jordan arrived two days after this happened, and he, Andrea, and I had already bought tickets to fly from Paris to Portugal, then from southern Spain back to France. So he obviously had to drastically change his plans but has been amazingly awesome about it. It just really sucked for all 3 of us, but everyone’s being positive about it.

So anyway I was able to leave the hospital Saturday night around 10pm, and my two roommates have been taking care of me ever since. And Jordan was able to get a train to come to Rennes for a few days, so it was awesome to have him here, even if circumstances were a bit strange! More to come on all of that … just wanted to give the medical update! So for now, I'm taking it easy, hobbling around a bit on awkward French crutches, and not doing much else for now.