August 2, 2019 Friday American Hospital and Colosseum

Friday morning dawned and Sue’s knee wasn’t any better, and she decided she needed to go to the American Hospital to have it looked at.  I asked the building complex manager to call us a taxi.  The Rome American Hospital was about a 20 minute ride from the apartment.  We walked in and went to the front desk to ask for a doctor to take a look at Sue’s knee.  The receptionist explained that this was a private hospital, we told here that we would pay for the services.  She then took the information and asked us to sit down in the lobby.  About 5-10 minutes later she asked me to take the phone to talk to a doctor.  The doctor explained that he could be at the hospital in about 30 minutes and would that be okay?  I responded, “do I have a choice?”  He chuckled, and I said we would wait.  

The young doctor, an orthopedic trauma specialist showed up about 30 minutes later.  The first thing we had to do was to set up an account by giving them our contact information, and how we would pay for the services.  Then the doctor took Sue to get x-rays of her knee.  I may not have the sequence right, but he came back to explain that no bones were broken and they couldn’t tell if anything was torn.  He explained that as people get older, over 60 the tissues in the knee get more brittle.  Sue pointed out that she was 71.  He then wrapped the knee to stabilize the joint.  He suggested possibly using crutches.  Sue said that using crutches on the cobble stone streets and sidewalks would be too risky.  He proscribed some pain medication, and then we went to pay the bills.  The bill was 205€: 100€ for the doctor, 65€ for the x-ray, and 40€ for the wrap.  Sue told him that this would have cost probably $2,000 in the US.  It does seem odd that the wrap cost 40€.  An elastic bandage costs about $9 here, go figure.  The hospital called a taxi for us and we went back to the apartment.  Two taxi rides in one day is a first for us, but this was kind of a special situation.

As I’ve complained about too many times there was not internet in the apartment, but we found something of a solution.  The sitting room has a couch in front of a window, if we opened the window and the shutters and sat as close to the window as we could, our phones would eventually connect with the cell phone network.  We had the internets!  Sue could rest her knee and have Facebook and Twitter.  So Sue let me go out to wander around Rome and take photos, this was better than having me hang around bothering her.

I checked the bus and tram schedules and tram 3 was due in a few minutes, so off I went.  I took the tram to the Colosseum stop.  I walked around taking photos of the Colosseum and Constantine’s Arch.  As usual I took too many photos of the same things, and then can’t delete them.  I to repeat myself don’t I?  The sky was over cast when I started taking photos.  It wasn’t long before I heard thunder, and when I saw the lightning I decided it was time to return home.

Sue put together a meat and cheese plate for our dinner, since we weren’t going out.  The meat and cheese was from food we had brought home from a restaurant a few nights before.  Franca, our host had left a bottle of Italian wine that Sue really liked, I had Coke Zero.  It was all good.

August 2, 2019 Friday American Hospital and Colosseum