2022.10.08. Intermed adventures

Got up fairly early to go to the hospital, then spent some time convincing my husband that putting it off wouldn’t do him any good.

Had a quick breakfast, then tried to get him to the car park barrier since we don’t have a card to it (considering we’ve only moved in 4 days ago and we don’t have a car here anyway). It was quite slow and hard, especially for him, since he had to keep hopping on his right leg (just like last night, and he was a champ about it, but his cardio is really not up to the level of such activities); not to mention it was snowing as well, because yes, obviously, it just had to start snowing this morning. When we got to the barrier, we noticed a lady just about to leave the parking lot and – since anyone and everyone can be a taxi in this city – I’ve asked her whether she would mind taking us to Songdo hospital since my husband can’t walk and I didn’t want to have to wait long minutes for a taxi (there weren’t many cars around, which is a smaller miracle on any other day, but seemed rather like a curse this morning). She said she’d take us and we quickly established that she is also teaching at NUM, though she is at the Law School. She was really nice and took us to the clinic, where I went in to ask for a wheelchair (so as not to make my husband hyperventilate from the effort of getting through the front doors alone), but they spoke no English and a girl ended up translating on her phone for me. She told me they had no trauma doctor and that if we needed an X-ray we should have gone to Mungunguur (the hospital that had sent us away last night).

Kind of deflated, I told my husband to keep waiting at the street corner and walked to the main street nearby to hail a taxi. At first, nobody seemed to want to stop for me (one guy stopped and lowered his window only to shout ‘No English, no’ at me and keep driving), but then a guy (who looked kinda shady, to be fair, but I was desperate enough to just get in his car) stopped and I navigated him to where my husband was waiting and we tried to tell him to take us to Intermed but he spoke no English whatsoever and even though I’ve given him my phone, Google Maps opened, he just got confused and said ‘Mongol’, pulling up at the curb, shaking his head (which had one glass and one normal eye, I think) at me. So I sighed and called the Consul – hoping past 9am wouldn’t be too early for him, but it definitely was – and he explained to him where we needed to go. Apparently, the driver didn’t know that area (which is weird since it’s a pretty busy and central one) and he’d admitted to being very confused by Google Maps. How on Earth he manages to take anyone anywhere, I do not know. Anyway, based on what the Consul told him, he could take us close enough and I kept pointing at buildings and intersections for him to navigate him to the hospital. There, he couldn’t park (nobody could, there was a long queue to the hospital parking lot) so we got out – paying a bit more than the taxi fare since he had no change, but 15k instead of 10 didn’t really matter to us at that point.

My husband hopped to the side of the road to wait for me there while I went in to get him a wheelchair (the entrance was at least a 100 meters away from there, which would have taken us way too much time and pain to hop through). One of the receptionists spoke no English but another one was great and got me a wheelchair quite soon and just as I was about to wheel it out to where I’d left him, he called to let me know he was already on his way in. Apparently, the guy at the parking lot saw him hopping and called in on his walkie-talkie to have someone come and take him in in a wheelchair. So that was the hospital guy I’d seen running out, pushing a wheelchair. I’d suspected it was some kind of medical emergency, but apparently, he went for my husband. This nice gesture set the tone of our experience there. First, we had to register him (as he’d never been there before) and then I could wheel him around, taking him first to see a doctor (and we only had to wait about 15-20 mins for that) and then, once he was examined, down to radiology for an X-ray. After his X-ray was done, we went back up and were called back into the examination room within minutes. The doc told us that he could see on the X-ray images that his pinkie toe was dislocated and that he had to put it back, then he would bandage it to his next toe for stability, then give him a splint so that he could walk and his toes would be safe and stable. He took us to a dressing room and did just that – first, he pushed the joint back into its place, then bandaged the two outer toes together, and finally put a splint and a weird slipper-like thing on my husband’s foot so that now he would heal and be able to walk. Doctor’s orders is that he should RICE (rest, ice, compression, elevation) – since the bandage gives him compression and we can’t ice it due to the splinter, it’s just elevation and rest at this point. He’ll need to wear the splinter for another 3 weeks and we’ll need to go back in 4 weeks for a check-up. He also got some medication (a painkiller and a vitamin to boost bone healing), and the whole ordeal was over in about 2 hours. We’d expected to pay a fortune but it wasn’t even that expensive, in fact – about the same price one would pay for all this in Hungary, if one went to a private clinic, I assume; also, his insurance company will probably cover at least some of it.

Waiting for the doctor to see us (that dislocated pinkie toe deliberately not visible here)

From then on, we were both much calmer, knowing things would indeed be alright. The excellent care and the fact that they spoke English (receptionist, nurse, doctor, pharmacist, even though the doctor wasn’t proficient, he could still communicate to us what he wanted and he was also very patient and kind), and the quick and efficient way in which they operated made sure that if we’d ever need to go to hospital again (but let’s hope we won’t need to!), we’d definitely come back here. Could only recommend, really. There’s a reason so many people rate them so high – especially in the English-speaking community.

Once we were done at Intermed, I hailed a taxi (the receptionist had tried to get one for us but said that unfortunately, she couldn’t) and we came home. I made a quick ramen and cooked some sweet potato noodles (with soy sauce and sweet corn, seeing as we don’t really have much food yet) for lunch, then left my husband to get some rest while I went to the supermarket to get some frozen goods (in case we need to ice his foot) and some food for the weekend.

Hubby's foot in the splinter

Found a puzzle of our Parliament building in Orgil supermarket! Might buy it later.

It's so strange to have snow in the beginning of October.

In the afternoon, being understandably tired, my husband had a lie down and I allocated some time to updating both this diary and the one I write about my knees. It kept slowly snowing outside, but the sun also came out, and that made for a great view from out apartment.

For dinner, my husband wanted Indian (and he’d been going on and on about this Indian restaurant in Ulaanbaatar several weeks before we’d even moved here, having read reviews about the place) and since the app just didn’t seem to be working properly (all payment methods were out of question bc we do not have Mongolian ID numbers and such; also, we couldn’t translate the address fields either, as Google said the words meant ‘entrance’, ‘number’, and ‘double’, and we had no idea what information to put where for the delivery), my husband ended up asking me to just walk there (it’s really close) and get takeout for dinner. Being the good wife I am (and since he’d had a hard day anyway) I went to the restaurant and waited for the food to take it home and enjoy together. And enjoy it we did, holy-moly. Everything tasted really good and the portions were so huge I could only eat half of my dish – that is not something that happens often, I usually only leave a small amount that either gets eaten by my husband or we pack it for a snack (since it’s too little for a proper meal) – not this time though, it will definitely be enough for lunch tomorrow.

Finally letting myself relax a bit (of course only once I’d cleaned up all the kitchen and did the dishes (from yesterday as well, since my husband had left them there after his accident) and put some things away), I’ve watched YouTube videos and we went to bed at a surprisingly acceptable time – that is, before midnight, if you can believe it.