Arcos de la Frontera & Going to the Hospital in Foreign Country

Our second house sit of the trip brought us to Arcos de la Frontera for 10 days. (More on becoming a house sitter in this post.) Mr. Go and our friend had their own Airbnb for the first two days while Babs and I cared for three lovely cats.

It took me another day and a half to recover from my food poisoning while Mr. Go and our friend explored Arcos, which is really quite tiny. The charming whitewashed old town, with its castle and church high on the hill, was rife with shops and restaurants.

The narrow lanes climbing up the high hill were a struggle for automotive traffic. If a truck had to stop to make a delivery, all the vehicles behind just had to wait. And pedestrians had to find a doorway to hop into when a car went by or else be nicked by the side mirror.

Our apartment was incredibly comfortable. We had a clothes dryer for the first time in two months and relished the efficiency of not waiting for the stuff on the rack to dry in the sun. The homeowners were an American & a British former American and very much our kind of people. She left games and markers out for Babs and upon her return, brought a gift from Barcelona for her!

There was a playground directly outside our front door that was always filled with kids. Annoying on New Year's Eve when they were tossing firecrackers at our windows, but otherwise fun for Babs to walk outside and have kids to play with. One girl with whom she played several times saw us on the sidewalk one day and greeted Babs with a hug just like they were old friends.

The cats were indoor/outdoor, but still somehow felt clean. As clean as a cat can be, anyway. It was a breeze to care for them. I never realized how lovely it is to have the warm weight and gentle vibration of its purrs on your lap (or chest, or hip). The oldest cat was a snuggler and slept in bed with Mr. Go, while Babs and I cuddled in the other guest room.

In the coming week we would discover several lovely hiking trails around Arcos, some that led to the lake and others wrapping along the river and around the castle.

But after two days in Arcos, our friend left for home and Mr. Go joined us at the apartment, tired and wrecked. As I was putting breakfast on the table, Babs headed upstairs to wash her hands, caught her toe on the first step and BAM, started screaming.

Her parents frantically rushed to her. All teeth were intact. There was no blood. That was good. I scooped her up and a second later, the blood came in big red drips. Mr. Go removed the paper towel after a moment to inspect then looked at me, face sheet-white, "We have to go to the hospital."

I had been dreading this situation, but knew it was all but inevitable. With three people on such an extended stay the odds were someone was going to need medical attention. I was just glad there was nothing broken.

Luckily, Mr. Go's Airbnb host had given our friend the phone number of her taxi driver friend, who'd driven him back to Jerez that morning. I called him and managed, in Spanish and a panic, to arrange a pickup.

Google told me there were two hospitals in Arcos, but it was a Saturday, and hours of operation on weekends were spotty. Our taxi driver, Juan Luis, bless him eternally, knew where to take us.

We checked in at the window and were pointed down the hall. I had a child who needed stitches, so when I saw an open door and a nurse in the room, I went in, I didn't care that she was still waiting on a patient. My typically hesitant Spanish was forced out of me by a million years of maternal instinct.

"Mi hija necesita puntos."

She pointed across the hall to the waiting room we hadn't noticed before. But before we sheepishly sat down, she removed the paper towel from Babs' chin to take a look, probably thinking these silly Americans were overreacting. But her eyebrows shot up and she nodded at me. Yep, stitches for sure.

There were two or three people waiting, and two or three nurses on duty. We were seen within 10 minutes. I was instructed to lay on the bed and hold Babs on my chest, pinning her arms down. Mr. Go was to hold her legs. One nurse held her head while another did the stitches.

To her credit, my daughter was so brave. She cried for a few minutes after the injury, but not a tear after that. Not even when they gave her two shots of anesthetic in the chin. She wound up with three stitches.

A doctor did a brief exam of her chin and jaw to check for anything broken. She spoke about a dozen words of English and not very confidently. We were to come back in 7-10 days to have the stitches removed. We asked what questions we could and thought we sort of understood the instructions. But when Juan Luis dropped us back off at home, we scheduled a consultation with our dear Doctor Friend in Colorado. DF told us the stitches looked well done and gave us the run down.

"It's really hard to mess up the aftercare for stitches," she told me, sensing our panic through the video screen. Nothing could have eased my worry any better.

DF recommended leaving the stitches in for 3-5 days, so we split the difference and on day 6, went to the other hospital in town, as it was closer to our apartment. But the nurse told us the stitches weren't ready to come out. So we tried again the next day, at the hospital we received the stitches.

Luckily, our previous doctor was there. I'm pretty sure she let us cut the line of 5 or so patients. We slipped in and within five minutes were out again.

Mr. Go had purchased us Arch RoamRight travel insurance before our trip and the hospital took that info on our first visit. I'll update this post if/when the bill comes in the mail.

We took it easy after the injury. Probably too easy. We made Babs drink her meals through a straw for several days, worried about her jaw and spills down her chin.

Arcos was very comfortable. If there hadn't been an injury we'd have been going out way more often to explore. We liked the small-town feel, the beautiful scenery and the charming old town.

But we were getting kind of tired. We'd been exploring Spain for over two months. Always thinking about what we should do next, where to go and how to be prepared and safe. Entertaining Babs and ourselves, struggling to communicate, to keep putting ourselves out there even when it was uncomfortable, because otherwise what's the point?

Taking a slice out of our normal routine to live in a different country has not been easy. It has been beautiful, delicious and fun. Navigating medical issues in a foreign country (various infections, bloody noses and stitches) were some of the more challenging moments, but challenges of all sizes came daily.

I was ready for a rest. To let my brain rest by falling back into the comforts of the known, of an old routine. I needed a break from exploring. I'll be ready for more before too long, but we were counting the days to our flight back home.

We just had a few more days to spend in Seville and Madrid first.