Last Days in Italy: Part 1 of 4
A cappuccino I got the morning before all this started, after falling flat on my face, but before being rushed to the emergency room.
I’ve been back back for a week now, and how I ended up back here is quite the long an involved story. I ended my (almost) semester abroad with some very bad news and a week long stay in the hospital. This whole fiasco deserves more than one post, so I’ll start out with the background information and then talk about the more interesting things I saw, heard, learned, observed, experienced, etc.
Since before I left for Italy I hadn’t been feeling quite right, and I had a lot of minor and seemingly unrelated symptoms. While my mom was in Padova in October, she decided I should get a blood test, so while my dad was there we went to the doctor to get a prescription for the blood test, and that was the whole waiting three hours thing. The week after that was midterms, and I was really busy, so I waited until the next tuesday to go. I left the house at 6:30 and started off the day by tripping as I crossed the street, and instead of catching myself, the weight of my backpack shifted, and I completely ate it in the middle of the street. So that was a telling start to the day. I went and got the blood test and then went to class and planned on going back to get the results the next day. I finished class around 3, and I was hanging out at the BU center downloading TV shows and waiting to register for NU classes when the academic coordinator called me into her office and basically just said that the doctor I originally went to called, and I needed to go to the emergency room. I went home and put my stuff down and came back to BU and left with Elisabetta for the emergency room. We waited there between 3 and 4 hours (surprise), and during that time I called my parents and told them what was going on. My mom, against my advice, immediately bought a plane ticket and was on the way before I even saw anyone. Eventuallyy saw a doctor, but I still didn’t really know what was going on. After more waiting, the doctor came back and basically just said- you’re diabetic, and we need to keep you here overnight- and that’s basically all the info I got that night. I wasn’t expecting to stay, and I didn’t have anything with me, so my host mom brought me some of my stuff, which was nice, but he also said some really ignorant things for which I have not quite forgiven her. Next I got moved to an overnight room, and that was all for tuesday.
Wednesday, they woke me up and told me I was going to the University Hospital because they had a more specialized unit. After being taken in a an ambulance to a couple different incorrect places I got to the right place and got more blood tests, medical history, etc. I waited a while for a bed to open up and then got moved to a real room, and about that time the program coordinator, Maria Pia, came to keep me company until my mom came. Not to much later my mom got there, and things improved 100%. I ended up having to stay in this hospital until monday afternoon, which I definitely was not expecting, and we flew home on tuesday.
Those are all of the boring logistics of what happened and why I’m back home early. Still to come…
-The People
-Italian Healthcare
-Random Anecdotes and Key Cultural Knowledge
