So, on Friday, 2007-12-07, I flew down to Yelapa, Mexico, a tiny coastal village just south of the much more well-known expat and tourist town, Puerto Vallarta. The occasion was Kelly Groves and Phil Koken's wedding-on-the-beach at the Hotel Lagunita, and a tiny Mexican vacation. I was going to fly back to SF out of Puerto Vallarta on Monday, 2007-12-10.
(Those who interact online with me frequently may have noticed my total absence during that time. :) )
On the day after the wedding (Sunday, 2007-12-09), I hiked and was driven up one of the mountains on the south side of the bay, to go tandem paragliding, which I had seen two people in the wedding group do on the previous day. Long story short, the takeoff from the mountain failed to clear the treeline, and after about a hundred linear feet of travel, the trees brought me and my instructor crashing to earth. My instructor was fine, but I had five fractures in my right leg. (Three tibia, one fibula, and a shattered heel bone.)
We were hauled back up the side of the mountain to the top, and I was taken by (pickup) truck to a hospital in Puerto Vallarta, where on Monday, 2007-12-10, I had surgery to repair the broken tibia and heel bone. I recuperated in the hospital there until Saturday, 2007-12-15, when my doctor judged it safe for me to fly back to SF. I am now firmly ensconsced on my couch at home, writing this, with my leg elevated.
Yes, or I wouldn't be typing this. :) I have no other substantial injuries other than the leg: a skin scrape here or there, and a bruised left thumb, and some thorns embedded in my flesh.
In the more rural areas, I imagine it can get pretty bad. However, Puerto Vallarta is full of expatriates and tourists and outside money, and the conditions are actually really good there viz Mexico. I am led to believe the tapwater is actually generally safe to drink, though I don't know, because the hospital supplied bottled water. (Make of that what you will.)
At any rate, the hospital was actually quite good, and the orthopedic trauma surgeon specialist who handled my case was excellent. Trained in Guatemala and the US, spoke excellent English, and was always willing to answer any question I had or reassure me at any length, including talking to my (surgeon) father on the phone. He never blew me off or treated me shabbily. All-in-all, the best bedside manner I've received from a doctor other than family.
I certainly thought about and asked about that. The trouble is that I had a tibia fracture, which leads to tremendous inflammation in the leg. You really want a tibia fracture set within 48 hours of injury, which means I'd have to be hustled back to SF in a real hurry. Additionally, because of the inflammation, during a plane ride, the pressure drop puts you at high risk for blood clots, leading to deep vein thrombosis, so the airlines won't accept the risk of you flying with a known-broken leg unless you go on a medical evacuation flight with medical personnel to supervise you during -- very expensive and insane.
Given that, and the quality of the treatment and the doctors currently available to me, I opted to get the surgery done ASAP in Mexico, and return to the US for followup care. I haven't yet seen a US doctor to evaluate the treatment I received, but so far functionality has been restored, and pain is very minimal, so I am hopeful.
My mother flew down to be with me, and to help me get home, for which I am eternally grateful. (She had a bunch of free time because the day before, she'd just taken her last final of the law school semester. Rock that timing, kids.)
Honestly, not that much. It's much more a logistical clusterfuck trying to figure out how to get around and accomplish common tasks, or stay comfortable with the leg elevated. I also have more pain in my right thigh than my actual (broken) lower leg and foot, as a result of the circulation-restricting bandage used on my leg during the surgery (to lessen the bleeding during the procedure).
Yep! A big metal rod down my tibia, and some kind of weirdo connecting plate putting my heel bone back together? Sadly for my titanium fetish, they are actually some kind of weirdo compound of iron + other things (titanium turns out to have too much flex for this application). So, now I set off metal detectors. :/
But, given that I normally already travel with a CPAP machine and a laptop, both of which the TSA want to scrutinize separately, with this addition, I'll just start kicking myself into the advanced screening line and be done with it.
Nope! If the heel bone had been fine, I'd need a cast on the foot while the leg healed, but since they put a metal plate in to fix the heel bone, that's apparently sufficient. Weird, yes, I know. I am not a doctor, I claim no understanding.
I was told two to three months, but I've been healing pretty quick so far, so we'll cross our fingers and see what the US doctor says. Until then, no pressure at all on the broken leg, so it's crutches / walker / wheelchair / elevator / whatever.
Work has been their usually excellent self, probably mostly due to my excellent boss. I've got whatever time I need to get back up to speed once in the US, and then I can WFH until I'm ready to start travelling to an office, and until I get better, I can work out of the San Francisco office instead of having to hobble down to Mountain View!
So far, this is the only backdoor way I've found to get a temporary seat in the SF office! I can't recommend it as a deliberate course of action, though. ;)
Send me your love, comments, and gentle ribbing, as always. Also, if you've got an orthopedic doctor (that knows about trauma) that you love, in or very close to SF, send me their information! I have some recommendations already , but I still need to pick a US doctor to monitor my healing.
Glad you asked. ;) Things like whose fault the failed takeoff was, and whether I am going to sue anyone (almost certainly not). I am still processing this information, and it's a touchy subject for me regardless. Thanks for your understanding.
Really? Weirdo. :) I am planning to write up a more detailed report of what happened, as I have little else to do other than sit on my butt and mend, at least right away. It'll be up in this location when I do, or you can ask me to tell you when it goes up.
The weirdest experience was undoubtedly getting down off the mountain in the first place. After they'd hacked a path with machetes down to where we were, and enlisted everyone they could find (including passing expats who were dirt bike racing in the mountains) to haul us up to the top, I was put in the back of the pickup truck that had taken me to the top of the mountain, on a spare mattress someone had scared up. We drove for two hours (I think), down bumpy Mexican mountain roads with lots of switchbacks to the closest big town. (Yelapa, where I had started, is inaccessible by road, you have to take mountain bikes or ATVs or use a water taxi -- there's no easy way back down to where I started except by uh, successfully completing the jump I started. And, well, Yelapa is tiny and doesn't have much medical infrastructure at all.)
We finally got to the town and the clinic they were heading for -- but they ended up sending us on because despite being the largest medical facility in the area, they didn't have an x-ray machine. They cut off the ghetto splint we'd put on the leg, put a real splint on, made a perfunctory attempt to find a vein in my hand to give me some painkillers, but they failed at that, and so they just sent us on our way, and we drove another hour and a half to get back to Puerto Vallarta (on paved highways, which was no small mercy), at which point I finally got my first painkiller dose, probably five hours after the accident.
So, yeah: paved roads, good hospital baselines, ambulances, and helicopter medical evacuation: count your blessings if you have access to these.