This message is from: "Gail Russell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Hi All,
I should tell everyone what happened....both medically,...and the accident. Jim and I went to the Kaiser Family Medicine center yesterday. No one seems as alarmed as the Austrians were. It is becoming apparent that there may have been toxicity from one of the "caine" local anesthetics that were used to inject his foot, and his spine in the course of trying to fix his dislocated foot. We have an appointment on Monday to see a cardiologist and get the Holter monitor test started. I should explain a bit more of what happened. Jim has a normally slow resting heart rate. His foot was dislocated in the accident, so he was taken to the emergency room in Vienna. (Interestingly, the injured were taken to four different hospitals.....the emergency rooms in each have very limited ability to take on trauma victims. If they had a subway bombing they would be completely overwhelmed, as we were only five or six with significant injuries, none of which were life threatening, so it turned out.) Anyway....when they went to reposition his toes, which were turned out at the top of the metatarsals by about 30 degrees, they ended up having to do a spinal block. During the course of that block they realized his heart rate had gone down to 35 beats per minute. I am not certain for how long. Panicked, they gave him atropine to boost his heart rate. That worked, but then they called in a cardiologist, who told me he might need a pace maker. So...naturally....I said go ahead and admit him. Problem was, this was a Sunday, and Monday was "Maria Ascension Day".....during which NO ONE non-essential works. We thought he would have the 24 hour Holter monitor scan on TUESDAY....but no.....it appeared the cardiologist was not going to show up until WEDNESDAY. I figured it was just that the cardio had taken a long weekend. Meanwhile, we had gotten enough info from the nurses for me to do the internet searches to believe that he did NOT need a pacemaker. Also, my daughter had, by the skin of her teeth, managed to change our reservations to a fully loaded, tightly schedule trip back to San Francisco on THURSDAY. When the doctors did rounds on Wednesday, the trauma doc sternly lectured us that Jim still had a dangerously low heart rate. She also said we were "in line" for the heart scan. When we protested, she said she could beg her colleagues to move Jim up....BUT...it would still take THREE MORE DAYS. This would mean a week of Jim sitting in a hospital bed as they made NO attempt to get him out of bed. (No crutches provided or thought of.) Instead, they routinely inject everyone on the ward with anti-clotting drugs to prevent thrombosis from all the inactivity. In the end, we elected to leave "against medical advice." The hotel concierge found me a medical equipment store down the street. By this time I had managed to master the entire subway and tram system for the city of Vienna....so purchased crutches near the hotel and shuttled them off to the hospital so we could make our getaway. I then went back to Air France office near the opera house and spent 3 hours changing the air reservations and trying to get wheel chairs promised at the airport. (Jim had also hurt his hand and a shoulder, and could barely walk with the crutches.) So...we made it home. More in part two.
