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Patrick in the hospital
The gauchos had expertly applied a splint using their belts. Patrick has now adopted one of them as his sling, hope the gaucho has more of them!We´ve had a few ¨so how did you break your arm?¨ questions so I thought I´d bring you a special report on just that.
Since we´ve been in Argentina, we´ve been wanting to experience the real gaucho life at an estancia (ranch) and I´d finally found one that seemed like the real deal, where you could see the real ranch life, rather than just being a nice fancy hotel in the country. Well I won´t mention the name of this estancia in this blog because I don´t want anyone doing a google search on it and coming up with a blog about a broken arm, because this place was truly beautiful and the hosts so amazing. I´ll write more about the estancia in the next blog.
But needless to say the accident involved a horse while out riding with the gauchos, involving Patrick´s horse going a little too fast and him not being quite ready so fell off. He is currently thinking of better, more heroic, stories to explain his arm so I thought I´d get the truth out there before he made up some rubbish to try and tell you.
I have to say he was very
brave lying there on the floor in complete agony as everyone else looked in disgust at his arm, and only really made any noise when the nurse at the hospital yanked his arm round to take an x-ray. If you´re squeamish don´t look at the last photo on this page which shows him right after the accident. And before anyone says anything, he told me to take the photo so he could look at it after.
So the owners rushed over from the other side of the estancia to take us to the hospital in Posadas, about 30 minutes away, where some pain killers were given, an x-ray taken, and cast put on. Well as you can see from the x-ray it was 2 very bad breaks and the doctor told us Patrick would definitely need surgery. So that night we decided it was probably best to fly back down to Buenos Aires to have the operation. Luckily, we´d managed to stay at an estancia where the owner seemed to know all the right people and within 2 hours had arranged for somewhere for us to stay in BA, and had hooked us up with a doctor and hospital
After the surgery
You can see the plates, and all those little dashes are the load of staples in his arm with a very good reputation in BA (both her father and grandfather were doctors, so were 2 cousins (that we know of) and apparently her father or grandfather was the minister of finance in the province they live in, connections).
So we flew down on the Saturday and on Sunday evening Patrick was checked into the hospital and had his surgery. 2 plates and 21 screws later his arm has been put together.
So needless to say it´s been an interesting week. The bandage came off this morning so we had a look at the 50 odd staples in his arm, those will come out next week. Hopefully then we´ll be back on the travels although we now have to think about our route again as he won´t be able to use his arm properly for another few months.
I´ll update the blog properly in the next few days or so. Meantime I´ll leave you to look at the lovely photos................
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Chris Porter
non-member comment
WOW.... that is impressive !!
Blimey mate, I actually feel a little guilty for taking the p1ss now (only a little!!), that is an impressive break, in fact it looks like a special effect from Harry Potter. Joking aside, sorry to see (literally - it is quite stomach churning)/hear this happened mate, sounds like you did quite well with the health care though. Perhaps you should stick to betting on, rather than sitting on the gee gees ! Hope it doesn't hamper you too much, as they say, get well soon.