While we were in Panama City for the purpose of obtaining our residency visas, we stayed at the Executive Hotel, which we chose because its within walking distance of our lawyers office and a lot of shops, restaurants, and bars. On our first full day in the city we had visited our lawyer and taken care of some banking business when we decided to go out and get sim cards for our phones. We were walking and going to cross Vía España which is a wide road with a lot of traffic. We were standing at a very high curb and when the crossing light turned green we stepped off the curb (I did anyway) and Nancy came down on her left foot very hard and fell in the middle of the street. We didn’t get very far after that before her foot started to swell alarmingly and she was in quite a bit of pain.
We hobbled back to the hotel where they called paramedics for us. The paramedics came up to our room and examined Nancy and said she needed her foot x-rayed. So into the ambulance we went for a drive across town to a private hospital, Hospital Nacional on Avenida Cuba. The traffic was very heavy and I said to the driver something about “mucho tráfico loco” so he smiled and turned on the siren. Cars and trucks started scattering (or trying to) right and left and I was laughing, the driver was laughing, and even Nancy in the back of the ambulance was laughing. It was quite a ride.
When we got to the hospital they took Nancy right in to the emergency room while I paid the cashier a $500 deposit (they were not familiar with our health insurance so they would not take it). The girls at the cashiers desk only spoke Spanish and my Spanish was pretty limited but we muddled through. Meanwhile Nancy had seen the emergency room physician and they wheeled her off for x-rays. When she got back to the room a nurse came in to give her a shot in her ass for inflammation which she took like a trooper (she yelled so loud the nurse said “everyone is going to think I’m killing you in here!”). Soon after that another nurse came in and fitted her for a boot and then an orthopedic specialist came in and went over her x-rays with us. The orthopedic specialist (who spoke perfect English) told us she had a possible a fracture of one of her metatarsal bones and in any case it would take a few weeks to heal. He gave her a DVD of her x-rays in case she needed to see a doctor when we got back to Pennsylvania.
She was fitted with her new boot, the orthopedic specialist gave her his cell phone number and email address and told her to call if she felt any undue pain or swelling. I was sent to the pharmacy to get Nancy her drugs and then I went back to the cashiers desk to settle up. The total bill including ambulance, doctors, boot, shot x-rays, and drugs cost just about $800. No complaints about the quality or cost of Nancy’s care for this little mishap.
They got us a taxi back to the hotel, we had a couple of drinks, and did not get to do a lot of walking for the rest of our stay. We spent the next day in immigration but thats another story…