A quick trip to the Emergency Room!

La Spezia Hospital
see all photos »

21/12/05

We arrived in La Spezia in the late afternoon and we had just enough time to check in to our hotel and get ready to go to dinner. After dinner we rounded up some fellow shithead players with a couple of bottles of Vodka and munchies and planted ourselves in the hotel lobby until the wee hours of the morning playing shithead. The following morning we had to get up early to get a train to see Chinqua Terra - or so I thought...

22/02/05

As I woke up very early the next morning with severe stomach pains I knew that it definately wasn't alcohol induced, so our tour leader told us where the hospital was and Peta and I set off on a bus to find it... Only to find that nobody in the hospital spoke English and we spent the good part of an hour trying to find where the hell we were meant to get into the place. Finally we found the right entrance and found a doctor that spoke a small amount of English (very small) and we tried with great effort to tell him what was wrong! Peta then got told to wait in the visitors area where she spent the next 45 minutes planning what she was going to do if it was something serious and having a mini stress attack because I was taking so long. I on the other hand found a nice nurse that spoke good english and had to wait on a roller bed in the hallway of the emergency room to wait to be seen with some old man that was screaming at the top of his lungs in pain - great! I finally got in to see a doctor and they did some tests and found it was just a small infection. They gave me a jab in the ass with a needle to numb the pain and also gave me a prescription for another needle for Peta to inject later if I needed it - needless to say that she was over the moon about the thought of having to do that!!!

Peta stressing about the time!
see all photos »

So we finally got out of the hospital and gave our tour leader a quick call to let her know that we were going to meet them soon and that all was ok. We went to the train station and waited for the next train, the announcements were all coming over in Italian and then in English, so we were a little confused when the Italians next to us starting saying 'oh no' and then rushing to the nearest screen to find out what was going on... After having to wait until the announcement came over in English we found out that the train had changed platforms so I grabbed our stuff and legged it to the other platform which was quite difficult when you were laughing so hard and Peta had to stop and control herself in the subway!! We were finally on the right train and heading to meet the rest of the group, while Peta had a mini stress attack that the tour would leave without us and head onto France.. We made it to find that the tour wasn't even at the bus and we had to wait for them for about 20 mins!!!