Now That's What I Call ... Part V

I can't bring myself to call the rest of what happened after breaking my leg 'adventure' - I think there are many other words to describe what happened between reaching hospital in Aqaba and finally getting back to the UK, and 'adventure' doesn't really seem to fit ... there is certainly a good argument for giving 'incompetence' a star billing, 'chaos' and 'sympathy' (both alone and coupled with 'lack of') and 'Basil Fawlty' are all jostling for position too, and it would be impossible to leave out either 'true friends' or, unfortunately, 'jobsworth'. And of course, throughout it all I went from fairly constant pain to living on a cocktail of increasingly strong mind-altering drugs, so am probably not the best person to relate what happened. Well, this isn't journalism and I'm certainly no Kate Adie, so here are the highlights and lowlights as best as I can remember them.

The nice side of Aqaba ...

Much as I like Aqaba as a town, I don't really want to think too hard about the hospital there and would recommend avoiding it if at all possible ... When I woke up in the middle of the night there after finally having been given enough drugs to send me to sleep, I found that I had been moved off the A&E ward into a room with no lights, no water, no food and no way of calling a nurse. I also seemed to have lost all of my possessions and was again in an excrutiating amount of pain. To my relief, there was another sick person in the room and her elderly auntie who was sleeping on the floor next to the bed, and after a few minutes I decided that I really was in too much pain and woke up the old lady to ask for her help. She was adorable and went off to find some help for me, which is when the three witches of Aqaba AKA the night duty nursing staff turned up next to my bed - when I explained that I was in agony and asked for some pain killers to help me sleep, they looked scornfully at me and said that I'd already had Valium and something else earlier that night, and what did I want more pain killers for? I was almost too stunned to answer, before somehow locating my best calm voice and saying that well, because I was still in pain, and that I really wasn't going to get any sleep without some help. I could feel the disdain waving across the room, and they huffed out and were gone for what seemed like an age ... and then on their return, rolled me on my side (small scream of agony) and jabbed a needle in my arm - I swear they didn't even look at what they were doing, and I still have the bruises from it nearly 3 weeks on.

My friendly nursing staff ...

And as if that wasn't scary enough, I then drifted off to sleep, only to be woken about an hour later with the three witches hovering over me again, in the middle of taking what looked like a REALLY large amount of blood out of my arm - they hadn't even woken me first before putting the needle in! And looked like they were enjoying it too. Creepily, I never found out why they took the blood, and there are no blood test results in my notes from the hospital, so maybe they were vampires after all rather than witches, who knows ...

I woke again early in the morning, slightly more rested but still in pain and still without water, food or any idea where Mike and Vanessa had gone. Then thankfully the nice doctor turned up, and gave me my mobile phone that my friends had given him to pass on to me, and I was able to call for help which arrived about an hour later. The rest of the morning was spent trying to get discharged so that I could get back to Amman - the nice doctor said I was stabilised now and just had to make sure that I got operated on in the next 2 weeks, and gave me some pain killers to see me through and a prescription for what turned out to be the world's most uncomfortable crutches that dug into my armpits because they were just a bit too high for me (but the only other option was too short, which we reckoned was worse than useless). They were good enough to get me into a car and back to Amman though, and when it became clear that I wasn't going to be able to fly home anytime soon thanks to the ash cloud, I settled into waiting in my flat for things to blow over (literally).

Now, I called my doctor in Aqaba 'the nice doctor', and he was very nice, but not the most effective doctor in the world it turns out ... aside from the crutches, he prescribed me the most measly painkillers - paracetamol and one ibuprofen 3 times a day, I've been known to take more for a headache! - and I was in way more pain than the drugs could cope with. On the first night back at my flat in Amman, I ended up nicking some of Mike's back pain drugs just to get to sleep. So the following morning I did some research into the state of medical facilities in Amman (not being massively keen to return to a Jordanian hospital at that point), and eventually got some help to go and see Dr Amr Y Amr, who it turns out is pretty much the best orthopeadic surgeon in Amman - hoorah, competence at last! He took one look at my x-rays and informed that he was going to have to take me into A&E straight away, as my leg was disclocated as well as broken and the dislocation was causing swelling, which was going to prevent anyone from operating on the leg as well as causing lots of extra pain. He then very efficiently got me into theatre and gave me another Valium shot, which he said wouldn't send me to sleep but would mean I wouldn't feel anything while he manipulated the leg back into place ... Well, I'm lucky that I'm one of those people who gets amnesia from Valium, because apparently I was wide awake and very much did feel it when he did his thing, during which (according to my escort) I called him something along the lines of a "f***ing c***" and then fainted. He apparently didn't bat an eyelid, but it explains why some of the nurses and my escort both looked a little shocked and amused when I came round again!

And for those who like that kind of thing, here are the before and after photos - can you see where the dislocation was? Amusingly, when I showed my neice Alice my xrays and asked her if she could see the break, the first thing she pointed to was the dislocation and asked if the bone was in the wrong place, funny how she could see it but the nice doctor missed it ...

Before ...

... and after.

All neatly back in place again, and with some decent painkillers in my pocket, now all I had to do was wait for the swelling to subside and continue to chill out at home until I could get on a plane home - and I was surrounded by help and love at home, especially with Mike and four stranded French friends as well as my flatmate Ruth to look after me. In fact, the next 3 days are full of many warm and happy memories in my mind, including some strong love and great food - and no, I wasn't just high as a kite from the opiates (although it did help!) ...

Now That's What I Call Adventure ... Part IV

Oh, how I wish that reaching the bottom of the mountain was the end of the story - it certainly felt like the end of an ordeal at the time. After everyone had finished cheering and slapping backs and all that, I had to point out that I actually was going to wet myself, and rallied the troops into helping me do this normally simple feat - I can now attest that with no legs strapped to a scoop stretcher it takes 7 people to go for a no. 1 (lifting, tilting, removing clothing and holding up modesty blankets etc)

However, this important task out of the way, I then had to face up to the fact that the story had not reached a conclusion, merely a change of tempo, from scary death-defying physical feats to ... well, looking back, a crescendo of pain is pretty much the best way to describe it. I was put into the back of a pick-up truck - apparently the most comfortable vehicle available - with at least an inch of foam under my bum, and with the two undersupplied paramedics and Mike we set off over the desert to where an ambulance was apparently waiting in Rum village.

A collection of battered old Toyota pickups,
one of which whisked me across the desert ...

The driver had said he would try and drive carefully, and I'm sure he did his best, but with various bones jiggling around in my ankle and still no painkillers, I felt every small vibration, let alone the sand dunes and holes in the ground, between Um Adami and civilisation. Mike did his best to distract me - were we really singing hymns at one point? - and I smoked every cigarette available, but in the end it was just more and more and more pain ... I managed to get the driver to stop a couple of times when I really couldn't take it any more, but of course every stop was a delay in getting to drugs and the hospital, so in the end I just ate the blanket I was under and thought of cool wet grass ...

Two and a half hours later we reached Rum village at last - I was exhausted from the pain, and again breathed a sigh of relief when a trolley bed appeared and I was hoisted onto it and put into the back of the ambulance. And then, once again, my hopes were dashed - no painkillers (in an ambulance?! of course not!), and the nearest hospital over an hour away. Apparently there was all sorts of other shenanigans going on around me too - various army and police guys wanting ID and info - but all I could focus on was pain and my need for DRUGS! So I was very happy indeed to hear Mike and Vanessa give one final 'yallah' to get everyone going, and the ambulance drove off with lights and police escort ...

and no suspension ...

and a driver intent on hitting every pothole in 62.4km between Rum village and Aqaba ...


View Larger Map

... and after I had called everyone in the ambulance pretty much every bad name I knew in several languages, and had a good go at pulling the ambulance apart from the inside and eating my own hand, we finally arrived at Aqaba ... the land of drugs ...

The rest of the evening went by in a bit of a haze until I finally went to sleep - several senior army type guys came and talked to me, and the police tried to interview me, but Mike and Vanessa did a great job of keeping them away and trying to get me seen to and drugged up. At one point I saw Vanessa come in smiling with paperwork for my drugs, only to be dragged away again to have something stamped ... and I had to be x-rayed and interviewed before they would give me valium and strap me up with a back slab. My last memory of the day was Vanessa and the nice doctor smiling and saying that it would all be fine from now on ...

Now That's What I Call Adventure ... Part III

So, to continue the tale ... there we were, stuck 700m up Jordan's highest mountain in the middle of the desert, but actually things were going pretty well - leg strapped up and only giving me a dull thud most of the time, plenty of food, water and sunscreen, and when the sun set below the crest of the mountain the boys built a magnificent camp with a fire right next to me and a wall built by Mike's fair hands to keep the wind off - my Bedouin friends have said that it's such a good camp, they will leave the structures there and christen it 'Camp Jeanne'. By 4pm (three hours later?) we'd still had no word from anyone, but at last our guide Suleiman reappeared and told us that help was on its way.

But then things started to go a bit wobbly. It turned out that Vanessa, sent off to call the Embassy, was still at the bottom of the mountain out of phone range, and so hadn't been able to put a call in, and the 'help' on its way was the tourist police coming to carry me down the mountain. I'm not sure how rude I was at this point, but I tried to say as clearly and calmly as possible in Arabic that the MOST IMPORTANT THING was to make the call to the Embassy, and that Suleiman should go back down NOW and take Vanessa to the village. I also had to translate H's questions and instructions to Suleiman, and later to the tourist police and others who arrived, into Arabic and back from Arabic to English - talk about having to use my language skills "in anger"! I think Suleiman got the message, and off he rushed while we sat back and waited for the airlift. H and Clare had to leave us about this time, but they said they were only leaving because they were happy that I was in good hands and the right help was on its way.

The paramedics on their way up -
this is about one quarter of the rock face between me and the valley ...

About 5.30pm the 'help' arrived - two paramedics with a stretcher was a welcome sight, as was an English-speaking Bedouin nurse with his back pain pills for me and plenty of Bedouin 'muscle', but then it turned out that no-one had any form of communication, no strong pain-killers, and in fact nothing else to help me where I was or to get me down the mountain. To be honest, I really felt for the guys, because they looked like they knew that they couldn't really do much, and wanted to do more but couldn't. After much discussion and deliberating, everyone came to the conclusion that waiting a bit more for the airlift was going to be the best option, with the possibility of staying up on the mountain if need be, and while some guys went up the mountain to see if any of them could get reception and an update, the rest of us got comfy but also started thinking about all the options, wary of the setting sun approaching ...

So, in my head at this point, a beautiful rescue helicopter like this one was going to appear over the mountain to winch me away and rush me to some clean white hospital, all accompanied by a wave of something morphine-like washing over me ...

In fact, what happened is that around 5.30pm the news came through that there was no helicopter coming because I didn't have an open wound and wasn't unconscious - great, not broken enough or remote enough to warrant an airlift! And on top of that, it was starting to get cold, despite the blanket and fire I had. So, we had to face the hard reality that we were going to have to get me down the mountain one or the other. As I said before, moving 30m down a fairly gentle slope earlier in the afternoon was hell, so the thought of getting me down 700m, in some places near vertical, and still with no painkillers was frankly terrifying. Still, what choice was there? So, somewhere around 6pm, we made the call, I gritted my teeth and people got me into the stretcher to start the long descent.

It didn't bode well - they put me on the stretcher, then realised that it was too short and tried to adjust it with me on it, pushing and pulling in all directions. Thank God someone had the bright idea to get me off again and get it the right size first before putting me back on, I don't think I was capable of much beyond shouting a bit incoherently as they jostled me. Then they just lifted me up and headed off - was I the only person to notice that they hadn't actually tied me on to the stretcher, I still wonder? They also made the decision to take me down head first, so that I ended up sloping downwards with a great view of the void below, at some points almost vertical, with the only thing keeping me on the stretcher being my arms gripping for dear life to the stretcher frame, and the stretcher digging into my head. At one point the guys were dithering about which way to go, and i ended up screaming at them that if they didn't just go and get somewhere horizontal to give me a break, I was just going to end up falling off and taking the quick route down, head first ...

After the first few minutes, I decided that keeping my eyes firmly closed was the way forward, and trusting in Michel (who is President of a climbing federation in France and my all-time hero) to keep me safe and sort out the others, we slowly inched down. I don't know how Michel kept his cool through it all - he knew the best way down the mountain, being supremely skilled in that sort of thing and having done it four times that day, but the Bedouin and rescue guys didn't listen to him at first and I really thought he was going to end up lamping one of them - I know I almost did, and they were certainly aware of how cretinous he thought they were. Thankfully though, everyone swallowed their pride and got on with it, especially when complete darkness descended and we had to do the last 30-40 minutes with only Michel's headlamp for light (a rescue team with torches? come on ...). I'm not the best person to judge, but it seemed to take somewhere around 2 hours to get down that cliff, and the relief all round was so great that we all had stop and applaud (after they'd put me down!) and I nearly wet myself with relief. One thing at least, the sheer terror had taken my mind off the foot, and at that point I was just laughing and happy to be alive ....

Now That's What I Call Adventure ... Part II

... So, it was about 1pm at the top Um Adami, and our tummies were telling us it was time to go down again and get lunch. After the slog up, the way down was much easier although occasionally a bit slippy - Mike had a good sliding fall after about 100m which ended up with him lying in a crumpled heap with a rock on his head and several fine scratches on his arms, so once we'd checked he was OK and given the scratches a good clean, we carried on carefully picking our way down the slope and looking for good solid rock to walk on.

Not carefully enough as it turned out. I would like to have said that a spectacular leap or rock climb was the cause of my misfortune, but basically I was about 200m down from the summit on a not particularly steep slope when I stepped off one rock onto another one below, about the distance of a single large step ... and while my body went one way, the foot I had originally been leaning on got stuck to the rock it was on (i said there was good grip) and went the other. There was a loud 'crack' and I fell over, looked at my foot twisted round about 100 degrees to the left and remember saying out loud "Oh, I've broken my foot".

The break - tibia ball joint smashed in front,
fibula snapped behind ...

Well, thank heavens for natural opiates or whatever it is that kicks in when you've hurt yourself - although I was shocked, I initially couldn't feel a thing, and just sat there for a couple of seconds looking at my foot and thinking 'oh shit' ... the foot was most definately pointing the wrong way, and it looked like a bone was trying to force its way through my skin at a very strange angle, but it was kind of fascinating rather than horrifying, and I remember thinking "I thought this would hurt more". There were people next to me in next to no time, and there was an instant flurry of activity - Lolo dragged the kids away as fast as she could to catch up her husband Michel who was out of sight down the mountain, Mike and the girls were talking to me and the two Aussies, who were walking a little way in front of us, came rushing back and took charge.

The view from where I fell ...

Now, this is where the luck starts - firstly, I am on a mountain with a group of friends who are all experienced walkers, and we have with us all sorts of useful things like a medical kit, water and food, penknife, scarves for shade, firemaking stuff, sunscreen etc. They were also all incredibly level-headed in a crisis, and there was no flapping or unnecessary standing around saying 'oh my god'. But best of all, it turns out that the two Aussies, the heroic H and Clare, were EXACTLY who you would want to have around in a crisis - he works for companies like International SOS on rescue and first aid, and she is an intensive care nurse trainer, with between them all the experience and knowledge you could ever want or need when faced with a broken leg on a mountain.

In fact, I wish one of us had had the presence of mind to video the whole thing, because it really would have made for a great training video - having just done my first aid course myself, I could see them going through all the steps we'd talked about in my classes; primary assessment of injury, checking for surrounding danger, sending our Bedouin guide off for help, then getting me stable and comfortable, secondary assessment ... H even managed in the process to get my foot turned back to a more normal angle and then strapped it up to the other leg so that it wouldn't move. It was amazing to watch, although the pain started kicking in after about 10 minutes and I sort of lost track of things a bit after that ...

Strapped up and shaded on the mountain

As well as doing everything possible to get me stable where I was, we were also trying to get some form of communication going - we were 700m up a steep mountain face in the middle of nowhere, and it seemed pretty obvious to everyone that we were going to need an airlift. However, after Mike had bravely gone back up to the top of the mountain to try and get a signal, it became clear that we were far away from any kind of Jordanian phone network, and so we decided to send off Vanessa (who speaks Arabic fluently) with one of the guides to get to somewhere with a mobile signal to call the embassy and get the Medivac people to come and do their stuff.

We knew we had a few hours to wait for everything to happen, but it was still only 2.30pm when Vanessa left, and so we weren't worried about time. We decided to move me from where I fell to a position a little further down that was flat and near a space where we reckoned a helicopter could land - it was only about 20m but it hurt like HELL, despite the makeshift splint made from cut away water bottles (a McGyver moment!) and the two paracetamol (the only painkillers available). The pain of that made me and the others even more convinced that trying to carry me down the mountain would be horrific, but we knew that some sort of backup was on its way. The next couple of hours drifted by for me, with the sun sinking slowly in the sky, waiting for the cavalry to arrive in some form or other and finally having a moment to admire the view and count our lucky stars, considering how much worse it could have been ...

Now That's What I Call Adventure ... Part I

Well, there's been a short break in service recently, partly due to a lovely two week road trip with all my fabulous pals from Europe, and partly due to a slightly unexpected end to the trip which has put the Middle East adventure on hold for a bit. I'll come back to the road trip later (I'm going to have plenty of time on my hands!), but for those who like juicy details, I thought I'd tell you all about how I have managed to spectacularly break my leg … it's quite a long tale, so grab a cuppa, settle back and enjoy!

So, with a French family of four (Michel, Lolo and the kids Enzo and Magali), my friend Mike from the UK and two girls I know from Amman, Vanessa and Gemma, we set out from our camp in Wadi Rum at around 9.30 in the morning to go and climb Jordan's tallest mountain, Um Adami. I've been wanting to do this climb for a while, but had waited because I wanted to do it with my visitors, and both the Bedouin and other tourists had told me that it was an easy enough climb to do with kids, about 1.5 hours each way, and with amazing views from the top over Wadi Rum in one direction and over the Saudi border in the other. I had already been up the mountain opposite Adami with my folks and so had some idea of the treat in store in terms of wilderness landscapes and wide open spaces – all very exciting.

The journey from the camp to the bottom of Adami took about an hour in a jeep, through some beautiful valleys with carpets of flowers and even the odd mushroom poking up out of the sands – not what you expect to see in the desert, and the colours of the flowers mixing with the different coloured sands and rocks was just gorgeous.

When we got to the bottom of Um Adami, I have to say that it looked kind of daunting, but we had the whole day to get up and down again, and the lure of the views from the top and being able to say 'I climbed Um Adami' spurred us all on, so we happily abandoned the jeep to start the hard slog up. We'd bumped into another jeep with a couple of Aussie tourists and their guide who were also doing the trip, and as our guides seemed to know each other we became unplanned climbing partners – boy, was this going to turn out to be useful later on!

The climb up wasn't easy, but it wasn't too hard either – sometimes having to use hands and feet together to get up some of the rocks, but it wasn't anywhere near rock-climbing and the dry sandstone gave pretty good grip. The two kids scampered up like little mountain goats and the fitter members of the group got further and further ahead, but we weren't in any hurry, taking time to look at plants and views, and we waited for each other so that we finally got to the top altogether …



As you can see, the panorama was amazing and everyone reckoned was well worth the climb up, which we did in about 2 hours. We spent a leisurely half hour at the summit sitting in awe, taking photos and just relaxing, but keeping in mind that the sun was getting hotter and that our full lunch was waiting for us at the bottom of the mountain ...

My favourite lunch spot

I've put on photos of Um Qais before, but it really is my favourite lunch spot in all Jordan, with the most amazing panorama laid out before you (and the food is great too of course!). Often when I've been up there, the haze has been quite thick, but last time we had a crystal clear view of the area where Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan meet, with the Sea of Galilee and the Golan Heights. And this time of year, it's carpeted with flowers of every colour ...

Bosra

Another fine example of Roman stuff for you - this is from Bosra in southern Syria, right near the border with Jordan. I popped in there on the way home from Damascus last time, and was glad I made the small detour - it was a beautiful sunny day, I left early enough to have the palce almost to myself, and the place itself was magic ...

Bosra is most famous for its theatre, which is supposed to be one of the best preserved examples in the world. This is partly because so much of it is made of basalt, but also because it was almost completely buried under sand and surrounded by an Ummayad fort. They only dug it out recently, and like so many of these places, there is bound to be much more to discover buried under the surrounding area or under the foundations of the modern town.

Also like so many other monuments in the region, the archeologists have dug up more stuff than they know what to do with, and there are examples of statues and carvings just lying around the theatre complex ...

Then, around the theatre and fort are parts of the Roman city mixed in with Ummayad, Abbuyid and Ottoman era buildings, some of which are still lived in.




Some of the buildings have also been turned into weaving centres, and I spent a long time sitting around watching the guys at work and asking questions ... this is the only place I've ever been to where it was almost always men working on the looms - I don't know if this was just the looms in shops, with women working at home out of the sight of strangers, or if there's a different division of labour here.






And then there is this mosque - not much to look at from the photo, but this was apparently one of the very first mosques to be built after the ones at Mecca and Medina, built by the second Caliph Omar (the Caliphs were the people who led the Muslims after Mohammed's death, so this is right at the beginning of the Muslim era - it felt strange to be standing in the same room as friends of the Prophet himself, it made me think about how much more real and alive the Muslim faith can be compared to Christianity, where it is so much harder to distinguish the stories from the reality ...

And the last surprise was this reservoir - again Roman, and not even full when I saw it - it's so rare to see any expanse of water here in the Middle East, and to see a whole lake made me want to dive in so badly ... although it didn't look like the cleanest water in the world. The y may have invented all sorts of modern conveniences, but water purification was not (as far as I know) one of them ...