C'mon, the ambulance ride is FREE!

We are now in the third week of school for both the adults and the kids, and all seems to be going pretty well. It's Tuesday, and I'm writing this at 9:45 in the morning. Tuesday is my official errands day, since I have no classes. On Tuesdays I run errands for the family and for SYA (when Anna, la reina de la oficina, needs me. Yesterday, in fact, I picked up SYA's season tickets for the local pro basketball team (in exchange for rights to tickets to the first game of the season). Today is "Andee bicycle day," "classical music tickets day," and of course "shopping for bread, water, and laundry detergent day."

As I have said before, this will be a year of firsts. We have already had a number of them:

• First Tomatina.
• First whole Jamón ibérico.
• First birthday out of the US for Chaia.
• First man-bag for Doug (i know, but I have keys, wallet, other keys, bus card, etc. to carry every day).
• First foods: Snails, morcilla, Doner Kebab, rabbit, etc.
• And now.....

Andee's first-ever trip to the emergency room. As in, "Andee of the Nine Toes, and the Sidewalk of Doom (excuse the weak Lord Of The Rings reference there). On Sunday afternoon, Andee and I left Ben and Chaia with Griffin (who is determined to convince Chaia that she should drop out of school at 7 and start a jewelry design business. More on that later, maybe..) and took a taxi to the Hospital Miguel Servet, the BIIIG central hospital in Zaragoza. Here's what happened, including the back story:

We live near a major boulevard in ZAZ called Paseo de la Independencia. It's wide, busy, and full of stores and people all day. It is also apparently the site for a number of cultural events including (I'm told) the naked cyclists' traffic protests (I'll write about it when I see it). On Sunday the Paseo was completely blocked to traffic, and the street was filled with exhibitions of activities for kids. there were horse rides with mounted police, basketball games, tables for chess (Ben and I played a game to a draw), gymnastics, karate, etc. There was also a rock climbing/catwalk thing for kids to try. So during the afternoon (6:00 or so) Ben decided to try the climb. And got halfway there. And got nervous. So Andee decided to come to the rescue, and in her effort to quickly run to Ben ("run" and "quickly" is a dangerous combination for Andee) she slipped off of the edge ogf the sidewalk, slicing off the tip of her big toe and part of her toenail in the process. Ouch.

Now before I explain the rest, it's important to know a few things about this injury:

1. This is a fairly painful thing to do.
2. There was (according to Andee) a fair amount of blood ("a POOL of blood in my shoe").
3. There is a first aid tent nearby.
4. In spite of the pain and blood (both subjectively significant), this is NOT a typical emergency room-type of injury.

So when Andee hobbled over to the 1st aid tent, she was expertly attended to by no fewer than FIVE EMTs. After cleaning her up and bandaging the mangled digit, all five of them suggested that she head to the emergency room. For an x-ray. On the tip of her toe. Because it's Spain and it's free.

Did I forget to mention they also recommended an ambulance ride? for the TIP OF HER TOE. I don't mean the top 1/3 of her toe, I mean the TIP.

Anyways, after about 90 minutes in a VERY sterile-looking hospital we returned home with Andee's x-rays (negative fracture of the tip of the toe), prescriptions for ibuprofen and Betadine, and an interesting story. The toe is healing now (it's actually pretty gnarly-looking, I cleaned and rebandaged it last night), and now we know Andee's emergency room threshold. She also has a new nickname: nueve (Spanish for "nine").

*Andee would like everyone to know that she's fine, that she never actually fell ALL THE WAY to the ground when she injured herself, and that she refused the ambulance ride. We went by taxi instead.