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Typing is a bit difficult with my injured hand, so Miriam suggested I copy her update over so folks know what's up.
This past week has sucked. A lot. And most of the bad things happened to Chris, not me. I can't imagine how much 'fun' zie is having.
On Monday Chris was on the way to zir intake/orientation as a food delivery cyclist for Thuisbezorgd, the local GrubHub equivalent. Zir phone fell off the bike holder and cracked really badly. Possibly because of this, or because of other reasons, the phone ran out of battery and locked, and Chris did not have the SIM card PIN memorized, and so couldn't unlock it. A functioning phone is necessary for orientation, so Chris' orientation got rescheduled to Friday and zie headed home. Of course, at that point zie had to find the way home in an unfamiliar city without directions. This naturally took way longer than it should have.
Then, while biking home in the pouring rain, zie got hit by a moped. Zie was mostly fine except for a nasty scrape on the knee and some achey muscles.
Fastforward to Chris' intake at the new job on Friday. They use electric bikes. Zie was going about 20 km/h when the tires got caught in the rails for a tram and zie fell, scraping both hands, the previously unscraped knee, and doing some kind of soft-tissue damage to the left knee and ankle. Because of these injuries Chris was taking transit home, but sitting down wasn’t comfortable so zie was standing. And because zir hands were scraped up, zie was not holding on to the rail very firmly. The train lurched, and zie fell over, which slammed zir right rib cage into a railing.
I offered to call an Uber to pick zie up, but zie ended up getting the rest of the way home on transit.
At that point Chris could barely put weight on the left leg, and the ribs hurt really badly whenever zie tried to sit down, stand up, lie down, or get out of bed. Sitting still or lying still did not hurt too badly, and so zie decided to take some acetaminophen with codeine and after watching some cute animal videos, go to sleep. When zie woke up and tried to get out of bed to go to the bathroom, however, we began to suspect that the ribs might be cracked.
Note that the Dutch system is a little different in these sorts of circumstances. If you have a life threatening emergency, you call 112 and an ambulance comes. They assess your situation and I think give first aid, and if they determine that your life is in imminent danger, they take you to the emergency room. If you are not in imminent danger, but clearly need emergency treatment, if I understand correctly, they leave and you have to arrange your own transportation to the hospital. If your situation is urgent but not emergency room urgent, and it is out of business hours, you call the huisartsenpost, which I think is staffed on a rotating basis by all the GPs in the area, and works out of a hospital.
It was around midnight, so we called the huisartsenpost. The women we spoke with was very nice and competent, but apparently the emergency room at the hospital the Amstelveen area huisartsenpost works out of was closed, so if we went there, Chris would not be able to get x-rays. They told us to call the clinic at one of the other nearby hospitals if we felt the need for x-rays.
The next nearest hospital is the VUmc, which is on a university campus. I tried to find their equivalent of an urgent care clinic (ie. not the emergency room but open 24 hours) and couldn't find it. I tried calling three different numbers. Two of them hung up on me, and one put me on hold for way too long.
I had also posted on an expat community asking what we are supposed to do in this sort of situation. In particular I did not want to put Chris through the trauma of going to the emergency room and then have them turn us away because it wasn't life-threatening. Most of the people giving advice said we should just go to the emergency room. So I ordered an uber.
When we got in I told the driver to take us to the VUmc emergency room. He drove us somewhere on the VUmc campus and said he was going to let us out there. I asked if this was the emergency room entrance. He looked around, pulled away from the curb, did a U-turn, pulled into a driveway across from where he had initially stopped, and said we had arrived. We were about a 6 minute walk (normal walking pace, not limping injured walking pace) from the emergency room. I was so angry with that Uber driver. ESPECIALLY if someone asks to go to the emergency room, you don't just drop them off wherever. If you don't know where the emergency room is, you say so so that they can look it up, or you look it up yourself. It does occur to me now that maybe I misunderstand how Uber works. I told the Uber app that we needed a ride to VUmc, because that is where the emergency room is. But where he dropped us off is also VUmc. Maybe with Uber they will only take you to the point that is indicated in the app? But if that's true, then when someone tells you to take them somewhere other than what they indicated through the app, you should tell them that so that they can edit their destination using the app. This goes doubly if the place they are trying to get to is the emergency room.
Anyway, we finally got to the emergency room shortly before 1am. By 2am zie had been admitted and seen by a doctor. By 3:15 the x-rays were done and we knew there were no broken bones, but they wanted to do an ultrasound to make sure there was no internal bleeding. By 4am we knew that there was no bleeding and everything was normal. Another specialist came and examined zir knee because it was really swollen. She suspects that the ligaments may be torn. They gave Chris some painkillers (a mix of a strong anti-inflammatory and acetaminophen), a prescription for more of both, and by 5:30am we were in an Uber on our way home. No money changed hands, but there is a deductible of up to 385 per year that will apply, so I expect a bill from insurance of, at most, 385.
This past week has sucked. A lot. And most of the bad things happened to Chris, not me. I can't imagine how much 'fun' zie is having.
On Monday Chris was on the way to zir intake/orientation as a food delivery cyclist for Thuisbezorgd, the local GrubHub equivalent. Zir phone fell off the bike holder and cracked really badly. Possibly because of this, or because of other reasons, the phone ran out of battery and locked, and Chris did not have the SIM card PIN memorized, and so couldn't unlock it. A functioning phone is necessary for orientation, so Chris' orientation got rescheduled to Friday and zie headed home. Of course, at that point zie had to find the way home in an unfamiliar city without directions. This naturally took way longer than it should have.
Then, while biking home in the pouring rain, zie got hit by a moped. Zie was mostly fine except for a nasty scrape on the knee and some achey muscles.
Fastforward to Chris' intake at the new job on Friday. They use electric bikes. Zie was going about 20 km/h when the tires got caught in the rails for a tram and zie fell, scraping both hands, the previously unscraped knee, and doing some kind of soft-tissue damage to the left knee and ankle. Because of these injuries Chris was taking transit home, but sitting down wasn’t comfortable so zie was standing. And because zir hands were scraped up, zie was not holding on to the rail very firmly. The train lurched, and zie fell over, which slammed zir right rib cage into a railing.
I offered to call an Uber to pick zie up, but zie ended up getting the rest of the way home on transit.
At that point Chris could barely put weight on the left leg, and the ribs hurt really badly whenever zie tried to sit down, stand up, lie down, or get out of bed. Sitting still or lying still did not hurt too badly, and so zie decided to take some acetaminophen with codeine and after watching some cute animal videos, go to sleep. When zie woke up and tried to get out of bed to go to the bathroom, however, we began to suspect that the ribs might be cracked.
Note that the Dutch system is a little different in these sorts of circumstances. If you have a life threatening emergency, you call 112 and an ambulance comes. They assess your situation and I think give first aid, and if they determine that your life is in imminent danger, they take you to the emergency room. If you are not in imminent danger, but clearly need emergency treatment, if I understand correctly, they leave and you have to arrange your own transportation to the hospital. If your situation is urgent but not emergency room urgent, and it is out of business hours, you call the huisartsenpost, which I think is staffed on a rotating basis by all the GPs in the area, and works out of a hospital.
It was around midnight, so we called the huisartsenpost. The women we spoke with was very nice and competent, but apparently the emergency room at the hospital the Amstelveen area huisartsenpost works out of was closed, so if we went there, Chris would not be able to get x-rays. They told us to call the clinic at one of the other nearby hospitals if we felt the need for x-rays.
The next nearest hospital is the VUmc, which is on a university campus. I tried to find their equivalent of an urgent care clinic (ie. not the emergency room but open 24 hours) and couldn't find it. I tried calling three different numbers. Two of them hung up on me, and one put me on hold for way too long.
I had also posted on an expat community asking what we are supposed to do in this sort of situation. In particular I did not want to put Chris through the trauma of going to the emergency room and then have them turn us away because it wasn't life-threatening. Most of the people giving advice said we should just go to the emergency room. So I ordered an uber.
When we got in I told the driver to take us to the VUmc emergency room. He drove us somewhere on the VUmc campus and said he was going to let us out there. I asked if this was the emergency room entrance. He looked around, pulled away from the curb, did a U-turn, pulled into a driveway across from where he had initially stopped, and said we had arrived. We were about a 6 minute walk (normal walking pace, not limping injured walking pace) from the emergency room. I was so angry with that Uber driver. ESPECIALLY if someone asks to go to the emergency room, you don't just drop them off wherever. If you don't know where the emergency room is, you say so so that they can look it up, or you look it up yourself. It does occur to me now that maybe I misunderstand how Uber works. I told the Uber app that we needed a ride to VUmc, because that is where the emergency room is. But where he dropped us off is also VUmc. Maybe with Uber they will only take you to the point that is indicated in the app? But if that's true, then when someone tells you to take them somewhere other than what they indicated through the app, you should tell them that so that they can edit their destination using the app. This goes doubly if the place they are trying to get to is the emergency room.
Anyway, we finally got to the emergency room shortly before 1am. By 2am zie had been admitted and seen by a doctor. By 3:15 the x-rays were done and we knew there were no broken bones, but they wanted to do an ultrasound to make sure there was no internal bleeding. By 4am we knew that there was no bleeding and everything was normal. Another specialist came and examined zir knee because it was really swollen. She suspects that the ligaments may be torn. They gave Chris some painkillers (a mix of a strong anti-inflammatory and acetaminophen), a prescription for more of both, and by 5:30am we were in an Uber on our way home. No money changed hands, but there is a deductible of up to 385 per year that will apply, so I expect a bill from insurance of, at most, 385.
