Accidents Patnem, India

Patnem, India

The past couple of days have been a mixed bag of good things and a minor and major accident. Yesterday Bob played a full round of golf with David, Eddie and Paul. They all had a lot of fun but Bob hurt his shoulder again. Not anywhere nearly as badly as when he tore the rotator cuff a few years ago, but it is painful. He will have to rest it for a while. This morning, Stuart and Fi arrived for a two week stay! We went down the beach to secure some sunbeds and were just having breakfast when Nick and Jan arrived to say that Joseph had received an emergency call from Gloria to say she had fallen while she was packing and really hurt herself. Apparently she had been standing on a chair to get at something on top of her wardrobe (which was by then empty), slightly overbalanced and fallen, pulling the wardrobe down on top of herself. She was alone in her flat but managed to get to the phone to ring for help. Joseph and Paul (who is a doctor), went tearing round and found her bleeding on the floor with a head wound and also a suspected fracture of either her hip or femur. An ambulance arrived and took her to the hospital in Chaudhi where they stitched her head and x rayed her. It turned out she has a double fracture of the pelvis. She was then taken to hospital in Margao for further orthopaedic consultation and Joseph and Paul went along. The fracture is not in a weightbearing place and so later in the afternoon she came back to Patnem and has moved into a ground floor room next door to our place where we can take turns in helping her for the next two weeks. At the moment she cannot stand alone at all and indeed must not, even if she could. She has to go back to the hospital then to make sure it is all knitting together correctly. Obviously, she is tremendously shaken up tonight and they have drugged her with painkilling medicine. Hopefully the next few days will see her greatly recover so that in a couple of weeks she can return to Kathmandhu. She does not have either travel or health insurance so she was treated at the “general” hospitals which were not particularly nice places although the doctors were good. A big lesson to learn there for all of us. Never travel without adequate insurance in place. All quite shocking when we’d been planning her farewell dinner tonight before she flew home tomorrow.
Stuart and Fi arrived safely and have spent the day dozing, sunbathing and swimming at the beach. So nice to see them and have a big catch up. Tonight we all did different things.. John, Sue, Nick and Jan went to cooking school at Chef Rahul’s in Palolem. It’s really great. We’ve done the course several times. Anyway, they made about 5 dishes and enjoyed eating them afterwards. The Cyprus 4 went to Palolem for some shopping and dinner. The rest of us went down to the beach and ate at Namaste. Excellent as usual and so lovely to eat out under the stars on such a warm night. Stuart and Fi did really well to last out to a normal bed time. On the way back several of us called into check Gloria and settle her for the night. She was in good spirits and definitely brighter than the afternoon. Lots of pain if she tried to move and we had to help her settle down but all in all, she is amazing. She’s going to have a rough few days ahead and a big black eye as well. I hardly like to mention in the face of such bravery that I have managed to catch a stinking cold from some utter b***ard. I have no idea who has infected me but someone has! Am utterly Snotty Muldoonish.