Hospital visit in Abu Dhabi?

WARNING: The following blog post is not for the squeamish. There is graphic material with some bloody images towards the bottom that may make some readers feel uncomfortable. If you are here just to see the photos, then scroll down, be lazy and have a good day. Cheers.

Have you ever been in a situation where you felt just completely embarrassed, but because you were surrounded by children, no one really noticed?

Let me explain.

When I leave my office at The National, I usually walk a block or two to meet my ride, catch the bus or hail a cab. During this mundane journey, I occasionally run into a gang of neighborhood kids who are usually playing soccer or cricket.

When they recognize me, they start calling out some nickname for me so I will play with them. I suspect the nickname is probably an insult in Arabic, because they tend to giggle afterward but it does not bother me. I was young too once, and even today, I enjoy the social ritual of public mockery.

On this day, they were kicking the soccer ball around and I had to throw out some of my moves. They cheered. My respect was restored. Everyone was happy.

Then the ball strayed into the main road and I ran after it so the kids did not get hit by a car. I grabbed the ball up, took a step onto the curb to avoid a passing car and accidentally collided with the corner of a metal traffic sign. Coincidentally, the sign was installed to alert drivers of ‘children at play’ in the neighborhood.

And when I mean collide, I mean the corner of the sign cut straight into my head. Like when Caribbean island folk use a dull machete to slice a hard coconut. My head was the coconut and the corner of the sign was the sharp object. Yes, immense pain.

Out of anger, I immediately let out monster F-bomb that was within ear shot of several nearby mosques.

They kids froze. They had probably heard their fathers or teachers use such forbidden language in the past and knew something was very wrong.

I tried to calm myself and then just threw the ball back to them, “See you guys later.”

No other adults had seen the quiet collision. The kids started playing again as soon as they got the ball back. I felt a strange tingle on the side of my face and that is when I knew this cut was gushing blood. A decent amount of blood.

I scurried into a nearby convenience store where the clerk recognized me. I essentially wanted to blurt out, “I NEED HELP!” but could only muster a whimpering “Do you have any tissues?” with my hand covering the gash on my head.

At first, the clerk pointed up toward a tall stack of unopened tissue boxes. He wanted to sell them to me. Then I took my hand off the wound and a stream of blood flowed down the side of my face and seeped into my shirt near my left collar.

He freaked out. The clerk stumbled back a few feet and then scrambled for his personal tissue stash. I don’t what it is about tissues here but everyone has them.

After I grab a few to put on the hole in my head, he looks at me like I’m an alien and does not know what to say. “Thanks,” I say as I stagger out the door.

Miranda was already on her way to pick me up so I did not really know what to do for the next 5-10 minutes. I grab a reflection of myself from a nearby car until an Emirati woman walked up and assumed I was trying to rob her by looking inside her car. She gave me a second look and then blankly asked, “Oh my, are you OK?”

I said I was fine and that my wife was on her way. She did not give it a second thought, got in her car and drove off. Seeing a man bleeding profusely from his head on the street did not peak her interest.

Miranda arrived shortly after and my main goal was to keep her calm.

I jumped in the car but she could see something was wrong. Probably because I had a hand cocooned by bloody tissues stuck to the side of my head. 

“Don’t worry babe,” I said. “Let me just take a shower. I’m sure I can just wash this off…”

I really thought that. That was my opinion at that exact moment. I must have been concussed.

After a brief debate, we decided that a visit to the hospital was next. But where is the hospital? Dammit, we really should get the GPS in our car updated…

After several U-turns and some white-knuckle driving, we arrived at the Al Noor Hospital near the Zayed Sports City complex in a hurry. I had just started to feel a little woozy. Perhaps it was from the blood loss. Maybe I was just hungry?

Anyway, after we found the ER, which was a mission in itself, there was a wide range of characters in there waiting for medical attention. The doctors were overwhelmed. I think from the pure fact that when your child has a cold, you are not supposed to bring them to the ER and then demand treatment.

How are you going to deny this wounded man?

I even heard the woman in charge tell a very concerned Emirati woman holding her sick child, "I am sorry but we have to serve people based on priorities. Your child has a cold. Do you see that man standing over there, bleeding from his head? I think he is next.”

Yes! Score one for the regular folks!!

But just as I was gearing up to go behind the ER closed doors, a female rugby player arrived by an ambulance and was laid up in a stretcher. She was surrounded by her dirty teammates fresh off the pitch and other medical staff. She was also gripping her ribs and moaning like death.

I then looked back at my supporting cast. Miranda gently waved and gave me a smile. “That’s OK, she can go ahead of me,” I said to the woman in charge.

When I got in the back room, the doctors gave me a quick look and wasted little time with the diagnosis. “Five stitches, maybe six.”

“And you just wanted to take a shower to wash it off…” Miranda said, as she shook her head.

“But doc, you won’t have to shave my head, right? I can’t lose these wonderful locks,” I asked.

The doctor, bald as hell, took solace in my request. “Just a little bit,” he promised.

They got to work, and shaved just area near the cut. The rest of the head was spared. Miranda was there to document the procedure even after some Arab man opened our door and demanded that the doctors ignore me (the guy with the head wound) and see his daughter, who had coughed three times the night before. Three times!

I have to give it up for the staff at Al Noor that day. Half of their work involved crowd control and dealing with irate locals, who are used to having their way. They were very courteous to Miranda and myself and had us out of there within an hour or so.

Oh, they also prescribed me a plethora of pain killers and strapped me up with a cool bandage around my head that kind of made me look hardcore. Like I should not be messed with.

The whole ordeal was very embarrassing and the worst part was that I could not play for my flag football team the next day. And it was the playoffs. Sorry, fellas.

For me, it was only my second ER visit since moving here almost two years ago. Once a year is not a bad average. Hopefully, 2015 will bring better fortune. 

Wearing a new red shirt to work that day was an unfortunate omen. The blood stains did come out after some deep washing and Miranda even said I could go anywhere I wanted after we left the ER. 

Several options came to mind: Fuddruckers, maybe the beach, or perhaps to the nearby ice skating rink (it is literally next door to the hospital). 

Since I had already fulfilled my concussion quota for the day, we chose the only place that really made sense to me at that moment…

Everyone loves an ER visit

After an across-the-globe flight, followed by a sleepless night in a hotel, I shrugged off a lingering illness and made my grand debut at The National for my first day of work.

I remember my first day at The V.I. Daily News. On my way to work, I took a photo of a car accident they published the next day in the news section and filed two sports stories before the editorial staff even walked into the office. They had no idea what kind of journalism monster they had just hired but they learned very quickly.

My goal for any job is the same: always make a big first impression.

Well, after my first day of work in Abu Dhabi, I was taken to the emergency room.

I guess you could say I made a pretty big splash. Within hours, the other reporters, editors, designers and janitors from across the newsroom knew my name, heard of my ER visit and were quick to question this random new hire from the States, who sported a pony tail.

After my ER news broke, people started betting on how long I would actually last in the UAE. Early bets set the over/under at a week. Others believed I had already rented a camel and was headed to Israel.

So what happened? Ok, I'll tell you.

I was still very sick from an illness that started when I was back in Wisconsin. But I thought it was just a cold. It didn't matter because it was time to knuckle up for my first day of work.

When a page layout editor was showing me how to log in to the content management system, I was sitting in a chair next to him and I almost fainted. Seriously. Then when my editor saw hives creeping up the back of my neck, he knew it was time to throw in the towel.

"Aaron, are you OK?" he asked, very concerned.

At this point, everything was happening in slow motion for me. Similar to when Will Ferrell's character got shot with a tranquilizer dart in the movie, Old School.

"Dude, we've waited long enough for you to get here so if you die on the first day, that would not be cool," one of the other editors said from behind me, after inspecting my hives breakout. "Go home, get better."

I had no idea about the hives. But when I stumbled back to the hotel and took off my shirt, I was covered in them. It was nasty. I fell asleep and when I woke up the next day, it was worse.

That's when another co-worker suggested the ER. I'm glad she pulled the trigger, because I still didn't think it was that serious. The ER? That's only where Eriq LaSalle and a young George Clooney took care of bloody gun shot victims.

At the ER, they had me hooked up to an IV and when I sort of came to, there were three doctors looking at me. One of them cringed when he looked down my throat.

"Enough of the semantics," I said. "Can you fix me?"

Then they brought in a dermatologist to check out the hives. Turned out, the dermatologist was an Emirate woman dressed in a full traditional black burqa, which meant I could only see her eyes.

I didn't want to disrespect so I was hesitant to disrobe. But she said not to worry and that she wanted to examine me. When she saw the hives all over my stomach, arms and torso, she immediately looked confused. I don't think she had ever seen something like that before.

She confirmed my suspension when she pulled out her personal iPhone and snapped a few shots. I imagined her chilling at the local dermatologist hangout later that day and saying something like, "Yo, check out this dude. How fucked up is this?"

Final diagnosis: bacterial throat infection. Reason for skin hives: undetermined.

The next four days were spent in and out of a deep sleep as my body, with the aide of five different prescribed antibiotics, slowly recovered.

With the blinds drawn to cover my hotel windows, I couldn't tell when it was day and when it was night. The TV had all of three English language channels and one of them was MTV so watching shows like "I Used To Be Fat" and "Room Raiders" just made me more ill.

I eventually got better and was finally able to respond to the are you alive email inquiries from my new co-workers. I was back at work five days later and ready to start learning.

It was like I was in a top-ranked boxing main event and seconds after the opening bell, the UAE -- my esteemed opponent -- connected on a powerful overhand right.

After a standing eight-count, I got my shit together. There's no question that right from the start, I absorbed the best punch this place could throw. Now I'm ready to go on the offensive.