Navigating Injury Abroad (Part 2)
Getting around with limited mobility and arranging an MRI
Catch Part 1 of the story here, if you missed it.
Normally the girls walk down about 40 stairs outside to the bottom of our villa where the school bus (it’s really a van) picks them up on the paved road. Let’s just say the stairs are not regulation in any way and there’s no way S was going to be navigating them any time soon. So I asked if the bus could make an exception and pick the girls up at the top of the villa. That’s where our driveway is; the challenge is that the road up there is dirt and it’s pretty rutted. Also, there’s no good place for the van to turn around. So it was a big ask.
While we waited for an answer, we decided it was time to arrange a long-term car rental. We knew we weren’t going to be driving into the center of Tirana, but it would allow us to get the girls to and from school at the very least, especially if the bus couldn’t accommodate us. I reopened a conversation with someone I had previously been in touch with to get this going.
Meanwhile, S gradually became a bit more independent, so she tried showering. Since it wasn’t possible for her to stand up and we didn’t have a shower chair or an easy way to get one, we leveraged an ice chest I had bought from a friend a few months prior. I positioned it in the shower, S got into her swimsuit, and I helped her into the shower and onto the ice chest. From there we positioned the shower head above her and she was able to wash her hair and body by herself. It was a pretty good solution all things considered.
By Monday (four days post injury) S really wanted to go to school, but we didn’t yet have the car and N was now sick and needed to stay home. There’s no way S could try to navigate getting to school without her sister’s help. But by Tuesday S really needed to go back. She was isolated at home and getting behind in her schoolwork. The bus agreed to pick her up at the top of the villa. I’m so grateful they figured out how to make it work, though I know it was really tricky and took extra time. S got to sit in the front seat and needed some help getting situated, but she was off to school (and N was back, as well)!
We waited with bated breath to hear about her day. Not surprisingly, it was a bit rough. She was stressed because she had missed 2.5 days of school and also she was physically exhausted. Trying to navigate on crutches, even with an elevator pass, was difficult and uncomfortable. The crutches rubbed under her arms and chafed her skin, and it was hard for her to get to classes on time. From a mental and emotional perspective, she was hanging on by a thread.
As the week wore on, things got both better and worse. S became more independent at home as she gained more facility on her crutches and the inflammation on her knee went down, but she still couldn’t bear any weight on her leg and she had lots of school work to try to make up. She was able to start wearing her old knee brace, which she had brought with her on our travels, thankfully, and that provided a bit more stabilization for her knee, but it didn’t really improve her mobility.
The next step was the MRI, as that would give some indication of injury severity and timeline for healing, hopefully. Of course, I was supposed to have arranged that and hadn’t yet. So I got the following text from S:
So, that was going well. In my defense, things aren’t necessarily easy or straightforward in Albania. I messaged the number we had been given and hoped for the best.
The next morning, there was a response: “Pershendetje. Mri e gjurit kushton 165 mij lek, dhe mund te shkoni sot ne oren 14:00.” Or, “Hello. The knee joint costs 165,000 lek [about €165], and you can go today at 2:00 p.m.” So, I guess we had an appointment? I sent the info to C (I was out of town) and he said they’d go then. I messaged the radiology office back to confirm and never got a response. Communication in Albania can be challenging.
C and S showed up a bit early and were able to get the MRI (9 days after S’s injury) and were told the results would be ready in two days, on Monday, but we had to call to make an appointment to get them. Somehow, that fell to me to make:
Unfortunately, the phone number ended up not being on WhatsApp. We still don’t have a local number, so calling posed a challenge. I really didn’t want to make an international call; plus, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to communicate with anyone. I was also unclear who had to go to the appointment to get the results. Did S have to be there? If so, it would likely mean missing school. I had more questions than answers.
Much here is a mystery and requires patience. You figure things out as you do them and hope for the best. But when you’re an injured adolescent, you want certainty and there is none, so it’s very, very hard. (To be fair, humans in general crave certainty and I imagine I would in S’s situation, too.) You also want instant answers to the question: How long will I be broken and on crutches?
I needed to figure out how to get the MRI results and next steps for S’s journey to recovery. Of course, this wasn’t straightforward. That would’ve been too easy…