Adventures Pt 2

...in an Italian hospital
And so we departed evergreened, mountainous Trento and made our (only moderately bumpy) way southeast to the Veneto. The only thing I learned is that if you get yourself half-carried into an Autogrill, you'll find out that there ARE handicapped bathrooms with real toilets and they are free! Sweet. I think the Iti's respected my snazzy, baby pink ace bandage. Several people wondered whether, if I were a man, if I would have gotten baby blue. I'm not sure--while this country does enjoy color coding, it also has absolutely nothing against men in pastel pink.
2.5 hours and not a lick of sleep after leaving Extreme Waves Adventure, we arrived back at our beloved Caserma Ederle. Sarah drove me to her house (to get some supplies--my last Italian ER visit, at which she was also present, took 5 hours) and then downtown to San Bartolo, our "host nation hospital" as Tricare likes to call it. It's well known for not being as good as the hospitals in nearby Verona and Padova. That's it's claim to fame. Well, that and the fact that my friend had an emergency appendectomy there last fall and woke up in the middle of it.
So Sarah drove me back to the ER entrance and a nice guy who was leaving brought us a wheelchair. Italian hospital wheelchairs aren't normal--you have to tip them on their back wheels in order to go anywhere (more like a wheelbarrow). There's an American military liaison/interpreter on duty at the hospital 24/7 (for which many people thank the Lord!!). But that doesn't help explain what canyoning is (and in Italian, as far as I can tell, the word is "cahnyohneen"). Um, we were andiamo in la fiume and jumped over the waterfall! But it was supposed to be safe! Caduto--fall--turned out to be the easiest way to explain it to curious co-patients. That at least separates it from the other main category of orthopedic inpatients: incidente--car accident.
But I digress. At this point we were still thinking a sprain or bad twist of some sort (since one can't drink a cappuccino if one has a broken bone) and were told that we'd probably have to come back in the morning for full treatment, since it was around 11pm and they don't keep an orthopedist in the hospital. We headed to radiology and as soon as the X-ray was taken I heard the radiologist proclaim to Sarah, "Uno...due!" I knew we were in for a long night. But I was wrong--that night was pretty short. We saw a doctor soon after that who stated from under his shaved head and behind his lime green-framed glasses, "You cannot leave. You stay here tonight. Surgery Monday or Tuesday. Two fractures." I stared in disbelief but all my pleading to go home got me was some medical bullying, and anyway my 2nd-story apartment wasn't seeming that inviting. So I said a brief goodbye to Sarah and she went off to do battle with Stella. Many, many thanks to her!! She is not a dog person and Stella is a very doggie dog, who at this point had spent way too many hours alone and had gone to the bathroom just about everywhere.
So I found myself tucked into bed with 2 roommates and a sheet tent over my ankle, and a long long night ahead of me as I learned how to sleep only on my back. But in true Italian fashion there was some soothing classical music seeping into the room, which made it a pleasant long night. The only disturbance was that every hour or so one of my geriatric roommates would sit up and call (or, worse, whisper) for "Marco! Marco! Marrrrcooooo! Nadia?"