A hard life with health E-Book

Reinhard Lack

• Herausgeber: novum publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 99

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Imagine it's Thursday morning. You are going about your work outside when it starts to rain. A storm is approaching. You want to finish quickly. You get into a rush. An accident happens. Your leg is injured. Your only option is to be admitted to a foreign hospital. And what awaits you there will shape the next year and a half of your life. This is what happened to Reinhard Lack, who was working in Romania and had to be treated quickly in a hospital in Bucharest because of his injury. He was deeply shocked by the conditions there. After his operation, he arranged for transportation to Germany. But his rocky road to full recovery had only just begun.

Leseprobe

A hard life with health

A hard life with health

It was the beginning of June 2017.

This Thursday morning, there was an extremely strong storm here near Bucharest in Romania, where I have been living with my wife for more than fourteen years in a very nice little detached house with a well-kept large garden.

First it started to drizzle lightly, then it rained gently until it was pouring down like a bucket.

I had the feeling that I could touch the clouds directly with my hands and squeeze them out like a sponge.

What started out as a beautiful day turned into a deep black night, with only the lightning from the thunderstorm shining brightly in the sky around me.

The loud thunder that followed went straight to the marrow of your bones.

I was in the process of loading our company minibus with some electrical appliances and other items needed for a traditional Romanian summer fair, or "targ" for short, or "expo", where we wanted to take part with a confectionery and drinks stand.

Because of this extremely heavy storm that was now prevailing here, we had to hurry to quickly load the electrical appliances and all the other things that we had prepared for this funfair.

The remaining items needed for sale, which were temporarily stored in the garage entrance, had to be moved very quickly to a dry or covered area and stored there, as they were very sensitive to moisture or even just dampness.

We have a driveway to our property about eighty meters long from the road to the garage and the house.

In the midst of this extremely chaotic and hectic atmosphere that we now had here, the following accident happened.

It was to fundamentally change my good, healthy and happy life here in Romania.

It was the start of a very long series of many minor and major misfortunes that would befall me over the next four years.

While lifting a two-meter-long drinks fridge weighing around thirty-five to fifty kilograms, I lost my balance under my feet and thus my footing on the now already very wet and slippery concrete floor.

I spun around on the slippery ground, slipped sideways, fell and hit my thigh and hip area on a medium-sized stone lying there near the garden fence to the neighboring property.

The result was fatal, shocking, because I had suffered a very painful, complicated femoral fracture, which unfortunately had to be operated on here in Bucharest in one of the existing state hospitals.

As I was unable to be transported due to this broken bone and therefore could not be flown out to Germany straight away, I had no other option but to accept this measure.

However, I only found out about all this a few far too long, very painful hours later in hospital.

As I couldn't turn into a different position or sit down at all due to this fall, I had to wait for about two hours in the pouring rain, shivering, whimpering with severe pain, lying completely soaked and stiff under a plastic sheet that was placed over me, until the requested ambulance finally arrived.

Which, given the waiting time for an ambulance in this suburb of Bucharest in Romania, fortunately happened in a short time.

In the surrounding villages outside Bucharest, waiting times for a doctor or ambulance can be up to eight hours, or even days in the depths of winter.

They often arrive too late.

They were probably here so quickly because they were told that I was a German citizen, the aid organizations are very wary of foreigners and prefer calls for help over the phone.

This summer fair, which I had been looking forward to so much, could now be forgotten, our participation was immediately canceled by our employee.

As a result, we unfortunately lost our paid location at the trade fair.

At least the storm had stopped in the meantime and the sun came out.

Two paramedics had finally arrived with their ambulance and could be heard from afar with their loud, crashing siren.

They quickly jumped out of the car and immediately helped me to move into a different position.

I could already see that they were trained paramedics.

They very carefully turned me to the side as best they could and placed a plastic pillow under my head.

A soft silicone splint filled with very small balls was then fitted around my leg, from the foot to the hip.

At first it looked like a long, narrow hard plastic bag.

It was slipped over the leg like a long, wide tube and then air was pumped into it via a valve attached to the side using a hand pump until it was full and firm.

The silicone beads adapted to the leg and were probably intended to provide a better hold.

I had unbearable pain during these activities, which I could probably only survive with loud cries of pain.

I was on the verge of passing out.

But the paramedics here were not allowed to give me any medication, an injection or an infusion, which would have had an immediate pain-relieving effect.

Here in Romania, these may only be administered by specially trained paramedics with special training and a corresponding certificate, which must always be carried.

However, the emergency doctor or doctors were not present during this operation.

These paramedics are only deployed in the event of major traffic accidents or other serious and open causes of injury, such as serious traffic accidents, fire accidents or suicides, as well as assaults with other types of injuries.

But not for simple falls like mine.

And the certificate serves as a safeguard for the emergency physicians, as they could be sued very quickly, or have even been sued by someone very often.

The poor people here are always trying some kind of trick to get money.

Finally, lying in this ambulance, strapped to a stretcher and loaded, he drove off quickly with flashing blue lights and siren.

The blue light was on continuously on my property, but without the noise of the siren, which led to all the neighbors gathering at the front gate and arguing wildly.

These loud and wild gestures with hands and feet are part of the Romanian mentality and culture.

Here on my property it was not absolutely necessary, but this blue light must be switched on during an operation, regardless of whether a minor or a major and serious accident had occurred.

However, it still took him about an hour or more to travel the fifteen kilometers to the nearest city hospital, as the city of Bucharest was once again collapsing under the daily traffic chaos.

Over four million cars drive into Bucharest early in the morning and out again late in the evening.

Even the siren alarm did not help much, as the so-called rescue lanes were very difficult to create, or often not at all, or were simply not formed due to stubbornness.

There were no fines for this yet.

A two-lane carriageway very often becomes a four-lane carriageway, as guidance lines or traffic lights are rarely or never observed, except at major junctions.

Wherever a car fits in between, another one will fit in.

Wherever it is still possible to park, people still park, even in forbidden spaces.

Free parking spaces are very rare in Bucharest.

When you're in traffic, all you hear is loud shouting, honking or people waving their hands around and swearing out of the open windows of cars.

The pedestrian paths are also not kept clear of cars and so the many people have to slalom between the vehicles and the sidewalk, which they have been used to for a very long time.

But as time goes by, this traffic chaos will dissipate, because working hours here in Bucharest are between ten and nineteen o'clock.

Many road junctions are regularly congested and if a traffic policeman is ever on the scene, he is often overwhelmed by these situations and then just stands around with his hands in his pockets or talks on the phone for a long time.

Finally, after a long drive, I arrived at the Municipal Hospital in Bucharest.

If you look at this enormous structure from the outside, you would think it was something special for the inhabitants here.

It is usually very easy to get here because the road was built close to the city center.

It is the largest state-funded and maintained medical university hospital in Bucharest, Romania.

But if you have to go into this hospital due to illness or not, you are truly shocked, because all you can see is the appalling level of pure poverty that unfortunately prevails here in this country and will certainly remain in this deplorable state for a very long time to come.

At the entrance for horizontal transports, which has two lanes, there was a very long queue of other ambulances from various organizers in one of the lanes, many with their blue lights on.

As I learned in some conversations, this is a firmly established law here, it is ordered to the dedicated drivers, whether they like it or not.

Some ambulances were just being loaded with patients, or they were already loaded with patients.

Other parked cars were waiting to transport patients or for an imminent emergency call-out.

Between the ambulances there were also simple private cars, delivery vans or even horse-drawn carriages from the very unpopular other peoples, I'm not allowed to mention their names, who had gained access from somewhere along a side road, which was normally not allowed.

The security staff, who are normally supposed to ensure law and order here, tolerate this wild parking in return for a small or sometimes larger handout.

There were parking spaces outside the hospital grounds, but it was very difficult, almost impossible, to get a free space there.

There was a great deal of hustle and bustle on this access road to the lying down recording.

Many people run around gesticulating wildly with their hands or simply running fast, as if in an anthill, looking for some kind of starting point or registration point.

And the loud and sometimes unintelligible shouts of individual people and groups or the very loud cries of crying children cannot be ignored.

Some of the paramedics were busy tidying up the inside of the ambulance, cleaning, talking to someone, or standing around smoking cigarettes.

Arriving at the very large entrance to the horizontal emergency room, I was finally unloaded with care.

In the midst of the chaotic confusion that prevailed here, I was pushed into the emergency room of this hospital on a stretcher.

After a crazy slalom ride through the interior of the hospital's emergency room - there were a lot of people here, including many who were just curious and didn't make room - I finally arrived in the so-called shock room of the horizontal admission.

Security guards present here opened the door for us.

I still don't understand what these security guards were here for, there were an incredible number of people coming into this room uncontrolled, not just patients, but also accompanying persons or relatives or just curious people again.

These curious people were looking for stories about the mischief they were probably being told somewhere by their acquaintances, or whoever.

Storytelling is all the rage here.

What happened next was unbelievable, unbelievable, but true.

Just as I was driving in, in the middle of the door to the shock room, the stretcher collapsed under my back with a loud crunching and banging noise.

The stretcher had not been properly secured or locked into place by the paramedics after being removed from the ambulance and placed on the wheels.

Out of the blue, as they say, I fell to the ground with a huge bang, along with the entire support frame and everything that went with it.

The paramedics first stood next to me, motionless and stunned, before they quickly and carefully lifted me up again with this rescue stretcher.

I was very lucky that I was strapped into the stretcher lying on my back, so the padding of the stretcher, a cushion and the straps cushioned this unusual fall a little more gently.

It was still hellish pain, I screamed much louder than I realized.

All the eyes of the people standing around me were focused on me.