The worst first

"Firsts” are exciting. The first day at school, the first date, the first day at a new job. No matter what kind of “first” it is, you want it to be perfect. You buy a new dress, take an extra long shower, carefully do your hair, get there early and hope for the best.

At least that’s what I’ve done for many “firsts” – and what I had planned for the first day at my new job in Rome. Unfortunately Fortuna had other plans for me and instead of giving me a great start, gave me the worst. Ever.

When I joined WFP, I had to submit a medical certificate stating that I was “physically fit to work and travel”. They must have felt a little fooled when, less than 36 hours after starting my new job, I was rushed off to the emergency room in an ambulance.

There I found myself in excruciating pain surrounded by dozens of doctors and nurses, who did not speak a single word of English. Needless to say, I had not picked up much Italian in the four days I had been in Rome either, which made communication difficult / impossible.

What followed were seemingly endless hours of waiting in dirty hallways, random trips to random people who did random tests on me and gave me random medicine. Just after midnight, I was finally discharged and my new boss, who had been waiting for me in a room full of drugged and drunken people, drove me home. Not the kind of favour you wanna ask for on your second day...

But as if that wasn’t a bad enough start already, the pain didn’t get better and I found myself at another hospital less than two days later. My new boss once again came with me and helped translate all sorts of questions. Funnily enough, “Do you have pain when you urinate?” or “Are you on your period?” are not the kinds of questions I had planned to discuss with him in my first week either...

After another series of tests, the initial diagnosis was overturned: my kidney stones miraculously disappeared and I now apparently had an (and I quote the doctors) “important” kidney infection, which unfortunately meant I had to stay in hospital.

Ill prepared – without a toothbrush, pyjamas or a dictionary – I was admitted to a ward, which I only left six days later after a series of medical, organisational, nutritional and hygiene disasters. My personal high / low lights are:

Medical

1. Being discharged prior to someone looking at my test results and manically called back to the hospital as I was already on my way out
2. Six attempts to take an MRI scan and four attempts to place an IV (including an attempt to ruthlessly jack it into veins which were clearly badly bruised from previous IVs) 
3. A hand swollen to the size of a boxing glove from an incorrectly placed IV

... after

 

    

Before...

 Organisational

1. Losing my records so that no one knew what to do with me for two days
2. Accidentally discharging me, only to then call me back after allocating my bed to someone else; making me wait six hours without any update or a place to stay (I was crouching in my old room with two new patients and their visitors – needless to say I felt really welcome)
3. Telling me that I would be discharged again, but not informing the nurses or preparing the papers so that I ended up staying another night

Nutritional

1. Breakfast: Two Zwiebacks / Rusks with jam
2. Lunch: Undercooked fish (which upset my rather robust tummy) and spinach (which you’re not supposed to eat with kidney problems)
3. Dinner: Mashed potatoes with rice

 

 Hygiene

1. No soap. Anywhere 
2. A “shower” (a basin and a pipe) that had not been cleaned in roughly a month 
3. A toilet without seat or lid, also unlikely to have been cleaned in the last month or two...

Add to that the traumatic experience of having eight doctors and nurses place a bladder catheter for my elderly roommate right in front of me, endless amounts of elderly roommate diaper changes and nurses who were so rude to me that they even made me cry... and it will probably not come as a surprise that I will do ANYTHING to avoid having to go back to an Italian hospital ever again. 

My only friends in the Hospital of Horrors