Woman vs Laser - The Take Down

When we all came back from lunch that was where the fun began for all the other staff, although there was a fair amount of hard work involved too. Meanwhile I had been told to keep icing my head and sit in the shade at the operations desk delivering the news to guests that the beach was closed. This did mean I got some good laughs at the expense of the other instructors though. The lasers that didn't make it out of the water before I got taken out by one, were tied up to the swimming and powerboat lanes, most of them had capsized although some were still upright. The capsized ones gave us a bit of a challenge though the masts and booms had fallen off, so someone had a bit of a freediving recovery mission. The lasers weren't the biggest problem to get out of the sea, it took double the pairs of hands but all the lasers were eventually recovered and sat safely back on their trolleys. The biggest problem was our Argos, these beasts of a boat are heavy and hard to get out of the water anyway the waves made it twenty times harder. Luckily management had called in reinforcements and a Mark Warner army of; childcare, fitness, cycling and tennis staff arrived. Luckily this meant there were enough people to pull the Argos up the beach, with the help of a very long bit of rope tied to the painter! 

The end of the day rolled round and everyone was exhausted, and I got sent home early and was driven home by the resort manager because of my head. When I was then told not to worry about being in work the following day. When I woke up the following day I felt awful so decided to just try and sleep it off. That was until it got to about 6pm and my vision had gone a bit funny. I let my manager know, and I was told I had to go to the medical centre. About 15 minutes later a taxi arrived to take me to the medical centre about 30 minutes away. That was fine, no drama or so I thought... that was until they instructed me to go to the only hospital on the island. Which is in Mytilene the island's capital, over an hour and a half away from where I live.  

I guess living in a fairly remote area of a Greek island has its downsides. The taxi ride to the hospital seemed to take an eternity, and on arrival to the hospital I was taken to what I assume was the Greek version of Accident and Emergency even though I had a referral from the medical centre. I remember sitting in the waiting room and taking it all in; the yellow coloured walls not quite the colour I would expect in a hospital. The ominous closed door into A&E past the desk with an intimidating security guard and of course the signs all in the Greek alphabet.  

After about 20 minutes of waiting, I got called and instructed to follow a nurse where I was then ushered to a bed and admitted pretty scary considering I had never been admitted to hospital before even in the UK. Shortly after, I was surrounded by nurses, all conversing about me in Greek. While they were talking about me, I was being poked and prodded to have a blood sample taken. I had no clue what was going on at this point, as I hadn't come across any English speakers. Just after this a nurse with red curly hair came up to me and put me on an IV - I'm still not even sure what that was for, she spoke a little English and told me it was for pain and I would shortly be going for a CT scan and for X-rays.  The next bit was all a bit of a blur, I just remember getting shouted at by a nurse because I was asked to do something in Greek but didn't understand. Then I was taken on a magical mystery tour to the CT scanner, then straight to the X-ray room to do a chest X-ray. No one ever told me why any of this was happening, so this was pretty scary.  

I was eventually taken back to the hospital bed, and then put on another IV which they didn't tell me the purpose of. It was getting to about 10pm by then so I was wondering what would happen and when they would let me leave all I wanted was my bed. After about half an hour a nurse came up to me and took me off the IV. She unfortunately didn't speak English so I couldn't ask her how long until I could go home. Finally, the red headed nurse came back and gave me a gigantic brown envelope with loads of papers and the X-ray inside. She then told me everything was okay so I could leave, then told me to look at the papers in the envelope. I did that just before I left the hospital, on opening the envelope I found it was just pages and pages written in Greek so this wasn't much help to me, so I decided to take a picture and try trusty google translate.  

Luckily my Greek manager knew I was going to the hospital (he was the one who sent me to the clinic) so was expecting contact from me. Once I got back in my taxi to go home, I sent him a picture and he was able to translate it all. The verdict the X-ray and CT came back normal luckily, but I was concussed. Doctors orders; to rest for a few days and take it easy. That's pretty hard in our job. My manager then rang me and told me to take the rest of the week off, this was a Saturday and our week finishes on a Tuesday. I effectively spent 4 days grounded, not just by my direct manger, by the operations manager and the resort manager. I was bored out of my mind and desperate to go to work, but they weren't having it which was probably for the best. 

I guess that takes us to the winner of this take down. Well only one of us ended up in the hospital. 

So that makes it: Laser 1 - Beth 0. 

And hopefully that's the last of Greek hospitals I will be seeing for a while.  

The Greek adventure continues ...