Taking an international flight in a wheelchair is something I never imagined I’d experience. Yet when I arrived in Bangkok a little over two weeks ago, that’s exactly how I traveled—having not taken a single step except for the small ones over the seam between the breezeway and the plane, the only gap the wheelchair couldn’t bridge.
The morning three days after my truck vs. pedestrian accident, motorpool drove me from our house to the airport. An embassy nurse and my husband accompanied. I was pushed in a wheelchair through check-in, immigration, security, and Rangoon’s mostly-empty international departures terminal. I was the second passenger to board the flight, transferred into the tiny, narrow wheelchair that fits down the plane aisle. I settled into a comfortable business-class seat and never got up during the 70-minute flight. When we landed in Bangkok, an ambulance—and finally, answers about my injuries—waited just beyond baggage claim.
Once I was in my third wheelchair of the day being pushed through Bangkok’s massive Suvarnabhumi Airport, I proceeded with V and the embassy nurse through immigration and customs. We collected our baggage and made our way outside to meet the waiting hospital team, which included a handful of paramedics and a couple of hospital administrators.
I was loaded onto a stretcher. Someone I couldn’t see behind me wheeled the stretcher out toward the crowded airport service road where an ambulance was waiting. For a moment, my stretcher faced directly into the flow of oncoming cars, their grills seeming to advance straight toward me. As one in particular drew closer, panic surged, and I felt the urge throughout my entire body to flee. I began to cry pitifully.
I think the nurse thought my emotional reaction was because of pain, or because my husband couldn’t ride with us in the ambulance. There had been a frustrating moment where we learned there was only one space for an accompanying person—the nurse or my husband—to ride along.
Technically, my employer hadn’t approved my husband to serve as my medical escort because he was still early in his recovery from very recent gallbladder surgery. Even so, I needed his support, and my parents had asked him to go with me. (And truly, nothing short of his own emergency would have kept him away.) Because of the rules, though, I still needed the embassy nurse with me.
She was kind and went out of her way to be supportive, but it was also clear that the situation was new for her. She mentioned she hadn’t accompanied a patient on a medevac before. She periodically seemed a little overwhelmed and I understood because I hadn’t been accompanied on a medevac either, and also felt like I had limited capacity to manage such a trip. I was relieved she could be there despite how quickly it had all come together.
I didn’t want to interfere with her responsibilities simply because my spouse had also traveled. As it turned out, there were already three ambulance personnel in the back, so the nurse had to ride up front anyway. My husband went in the hospital’s separate vehicle with the accompanying staff—and actually arrived before we did.
I entered through the emergency department and was immediately transferred from the stretcher to an ER bed and swept into a dizzying series of consultations. My wounds were examined from head to toe, cleaned, and redressed. I gave a series of statements about the accident to one specialist after another who appeared in front of me. Multiple trauma and orthopedic surgeons. A pulmonologist. A respiratory therapist. Wound care nurses. International patient relations and guest services representatives. A pharmacist. The head of occupational therapy.
Then came the scans—one after another, all afternoon, coordinated with the teamwork and speed of a NASCAR pit stop. That’s when I learned that, in addition to the bilateral concussion and two known pelvic fractures, there was a third pelvic fracture as well. I also learned I had a fractured big right toe, with a small bone fragment floating loose, a contusion on my right lung, and two fractured ribs on the left. Those ribs were broken near the breastbone, which explained why I could lift my arms easily, yet every cough or sneeze felt like my chest was being crushed.
By early evening I was wheeled into a private room. I stared at the futuristic-looking lights on the ceiling as a team of nurses got me settled and thought, I might be here for a while.
There was an adjoining couch and kitchenette where my husband could stay, for which we were grateful. We hadn’t even been certain up to that point whether we would need to find him a hotel starting that evening. The embassy nurse had long since said her goodbyes, since she had an early flight back to Rangoon the following morning.
We settled in for the night, taking full advantage of the unlimited wifi; it was the first time in over a month both V and I had experienced constant, unfettered internet access. We used it to make international calls over wifi, check in with loved ones, and post for the first time (three days after the fact) about my accident on social media.
It was during those early initial days that I started getting used to life in the hospital. I’d thought about taking notes of what each day was like throughout my stay, what progress I made, and what happened during the course of a day. But I soon realized I didn’t want to, for the same reason I didn’t photograph my injuries at their worst: I didn’t want to remember my hospital stay in that much detail.
My goal wasn’t to memorialize my hospital stay for posterity: it was to focus on my recovery.
Accordingly, once I was finally safe in Thailand and had the right diagnoses so we could begin work on a treatment plan, the whirlwind eased and I had to face—for the first time—the anger, grief, and frustration over everything the accident had taken from me. And while I felt incredibly fortunate to be receiving such high-quality care in Bangkok, I was still in a fragile, somewhat defensive place.
In that state, I think a few cross-cultural miscommunications arose between the staff and me as I tried to adapt to a very different way of doing things. I had been pulled out of my professional, full life where I was used to being the competent decision-maker and the final arbiter of what I would or wouldn’t do. Suddenly I was being assigned clothing and meals I hadn’t chosen, my medication was taken for safekeeping and doled out to me as if I were a child, and an alarm was set on my bed as though I couldn’t be trusted to stay put and call for assistance. The first issue surfaced when I wasn’t permitted to get out of bed at all. And I mean, for any reason.
At home in the days after the injury, I had been relying on a walker and stepping carefully with my left leg. I couldn’t lift my right foot at all because of a hip flexor muscle injury resulting from the accident.
But once I was admitted to the hospital in Bangkok, I learned that all three fractures were actually on the left side of my pelvis—and, fortunately, non-displaced. In other words, the broken sections of bone were still aligned and didn’t require surgery as long as they stayed that way. The risk was that if I tried to walk on them, they could shift.
So to avoid surgery, hardware, and the likelihood of long-term chronic pain, I needed to stay still and avoid putting any weight on my left leg. I agreed with this and was very glad to have been made aware of it. The warning underlined the importance of having come to Bangkok for proper assessment.
Most hospitalized patients on bed rest can get by without walking. It’s needing to use the bathroom that drives people out of bed. The hospital wanted me to use a bedpan or wear an adult diaper—and if I wasn’t satisfied with those, they’d put in a catheter. Naturally, I balked.
Since I started this blog, I’ve been hospitalized several times—in 2017, 2018, and again in 2021 alone for emergencies related to my lower back. I also had two hospital stays related to a bone infection in my foot. Not once during any of those hospitalizations did I ever use a bedpan, wear a diaper, or need to be catheterized. In fact, just hours after each of my back surgeries I was up and using the bathroom on my own—much to the disbelief of the nurse who I asked to wait on the other side of the door.
Same when I was admitted to the ER for back pain so acute I was howling: I got up and walked to the toilet by myself even though I was crying and moving very slowly. I didn’t even accept help in the bathroom after my spinal fusion, including in the months of recovery afterwards.
For me, using the bathroom has always been something I handle privately, no matter the circumstances. Maybe it’s stubbornness. Maybe it’s being really strong. It’s probably both. I understand that sometimes people need help and there’s nothing to be ashamed of. If I need help, I ask for it, but when I don’t, I’m not going to pretend I do.
So while I genuinely tried to be cooperative, by the first morning I’d already reached my limit being asked to comply with them putting a diaper on me. I had a bit of a meltdown. I needed to draw a line for my own dignity. I wasn’t suddenly an invalid—before the accident, I’d been very athletic, in some of the best shape of my life. The morning of my accident, I’d gone to the gym and pounded out an hour of cardio followed by my upper body lifting routine. That strength didn’t just disappear overnight.
Once I made that boundary clear, the staff arranged for me to be wheeled to the bathroom on a commode chair instead. Problem solved.
Another point of tension was showering. For the first four or so days, I wasn’t allowed to shower. I managed with hospital-grade hygienic wipes in the bathroom, though the nurses would see me doing that and try to give me a bucket bath instead. I appreciated the care, but it felt unnecessary.
One morning, I reached my limit. I woke up sweating and feeling disgusting. I looked at my hair and felt a flash of indignation. This was unacceptable. Brushing my teeth at the sink, I announced, “I’m taking a shower.”
The nurse went to fetch the bowl. “No,” I said, with what my husband calls my Felix the Cat smile, pointing to the shower. She tried to come in with me, and it took a couple more negotiations—and two days—to get everyone on the same page. Yes, I would remain seated in my chair during the shower, and yes, I would handle washing and drying myself. I would do this with the door closed, unsupervised. And I would wash and blow dry my own hair afterwards, daily. I had no physical challenges in doing any of this despite cracked ribs and pelvic fractures. That felt like a major restoration of my autonomy and control over my own schedule and life.
To be clear, no one wanted me to be dirty or embarrassed. Everyone treated me with a lot of care and support. The hospital team is wonderful and very professional. There are simply different ways of doing things in different places, with different assumptions about what patients can or should do for themselves. I realize these sometimes bump up against my own western sense of independence—and, admittedly, my small but energetic anti-authority streak.
There were minor disagreements I chose to set aside. It isn’t necessary to contest every point simply to assert independence. If they believed I needed assistance with dressing and wanted to treat me like a big sad dolly, I sat compliantly and accepted it without protest. But on the matters that truly affected my sense of self, I felt compelled to stand firm.
The final issue early on came up around my husband’s departure from the hospital and whether or not I should have an attendant replace him.
Unfortunately, he was only able to accompany me for two or three nights in my room before needing to return to Rangoon. At home, he would have just over two days to do laundry, repack, make arrangements for our cat, accept our HHE and Consumables shipments, and then fly to the Balkans for a month on what the Department calls emergency visitation travel. Essentially, he was needed urgently to provide assistance to his elderly mother who was living alone in advanced stages of dementia and Alzheimer’s.
I was under the impression that the hospital allowing a family member to stay was a courtesy to us, mostly as a cost-savings measure. However, it soon became clear that the hospital actually expected patients in this wing to have their own attendant stay with them for safety reasons, in addition to the nursing staff. The nurses paying unusual attention to me and checking in often started now to make more sense.
The reason I was given for this was “What if you need something, or stop breathing at night? No one is in here and no one would know.” I pushed back strongly. Had there been any concern about my breathing, I would have been in the ICU. I wasn’t. I was in the VIP wing of a major trauma hospital that was well-staffed to handle basic patient needs—of which I had few. And further, I had a call button wrapped around the railing of my bed six inches from my face and my bed was alarmed. There was zero possibility of me falling and lying unattended.
After a few days of the staff raising these concerns with me—and me relaying them to the embassy medevac unit to avoid having someone stationed on my couch and hovering over me 24/7 (which they agreed was unnecessary)—the hospital ultimately settled on keeping the bed alarm in place so they would know if I got up without assistance. In turn, I promised to continue hitting the button every time I needed…anything.
In the first few days of my hospitalization, I had an IV in. I had to wear intermittent pneumatic compression cuffs on my legs day and night to avoid blood clots. My face was bruised and gouged. The road rash on my left hand, wrists, arms, elbows, knees, and right foot hurt and wept like crazy. It took great effort to get in and out of bed. I spent most days in a haze of pain medication and trying to cope with my new reality. Those were the roughest, most discouraging days. But they were soon to shift into a more optimistic period of my recovery.
Collecting Postcards 