MY ODE TO URBINO
The story of my last five days in Italy
My trip abroad was winding down. I’d finished my magazine article and published my website about Venice tourism. I wasn’t quite packed, but I had a plan and I was too busy getting ready for dinner. Wednesday, July 4th was the second “final dinner” of my 6 weeks in Urbino, Italy and I was eager to head home.
I finished curling my hair and doing my makeup. I put on my dress and some heels and went down the acoustic staircase of the student dorms to meet the rest of my small group. We all trekked down the cobblestone hills towards the restaurant, our stomachs empty and ready for one last taste of Italian cuisine. As our party of eight sat to dinner, drinking wine, reminiscing on all the sights we saw, experiences we had, friends and connections we made, I had no clue Steve – my professor – and Susie – his wife – would be bringing me to the hospital in the morning.
I have mixed feelings about hospitals. On one hand, hospitals are where people receive life-saving transplants and welcome children into the world. On the other hand, it’s where tragedy walks through the door and sorrow exits. Walking into a hospital in the U.S. is frightening enough when you’re fluent in the language and your family and friends can come to support you. When I walked into the hospital in Urbino, I thought I would die there. People were carrying their own I.V. bags just walking around the halls, others were bringing in relatives with questionable eyepatches. The building looked ancient, but the inside was better. The technology was all state of the art, and the doctors and nurses were phenomenal, but when the only thing you can focus on is deep breathing and not dry heaving appearances stick a little harder.
The process of figuring out what was wrong with me seemed to take years. Not only was I asked questions on every possible floor in the hospital, but maybe 5 employees spoke enough English to be able to effectively communicate with me due to my painfully lacking Italian skills. If it hadn’t been for the kind people in the study abroad program and their bilingualism, I don’t know if I could have kept my sanity.
I checked in and explained what was wrong; I have severe pain in my lower abdomen, I’ve thrown up, I feel feverish, etc. They put an I.V. in my arm, got a blood sample and told me to sit back in the waiting area again. A nurse then came and directed me into another room where they asked me more questions about what was going on. After that, I was given a wheelchair and wheeled to radiology where I got an ultrasound and the diagnosis that my appendix was inflamed. I was wheeled into yet another room where a team of doctors and nurses poked and prodded me some more before finally deducing, I had acute appendicitis and I needed surgery. Immediately.
Every time I think about that moment my stomach drops, my heart aches, my eyes well up with tears and my chest feels empty. All I had wanted to do for weeks was go home. Not that my experiences and friendships hadn’t kept me occupied and doing fun things, but late at night when everyone at home was just starting their days, I wanted to join them. Being told I wouldn’t be going home when I had planned and then on top of it, I needed immediate surgery because of how infected my appendix was, it was the whipped cream on top of a hot-mess sundae. The cherry was being told I’d get to go home in one to two days which changed to four days plus one more to book a flight.
The surgery itself went without hitch. One minute I was rolling away into the O.R. and the next I was being vigorously shaken by a nurse saying “Michelle. Michelle are you okay?” (My middle name is Michelle, so I understood what he meant.) The next 4 days in the hospital, however, were nothing short of traumatic.
Urbino is a small town and the only people who really knew English were two doctors and a few nurses and of course the college students studying language. Throughout my stay, I knew enough of what was going on and what I was supposed to without completely losing my mind but having two or three nurses walk into my room every morning check my vitals, change my bandages and empty my drainage bag without saying a word really took a toll on my emotional health. Steve and Susie came to visit me every day, and I even got a visit from my “survival” Italian teacher Francesca, but that entailed sitting in a silent hospital room where I went in and out of sleep. The meals were tea and biscotti with jam in the morning and chicken broth with either orzo or inch-long pieces of spaghetti for lunch and dinner. I did get a lot of reading done, but that was because I couldn’t get out of bed on my own; for at least two days someone had to help me get out of bed and walk me to the bathroom and back. I couldn’t sit straight up until a week after I got home; I had to master rolling to my side and swinging my legs over the edge of the bed to get anywhere after laying down.
When Monday morning finally rolled around, I couldn’t get out of that hospital fast enough. I hadn’t showered in five days, put on real clothes, eaten an actual meal or slept in a comfortable bed in too long. Steve, Susie and I got into the taxi called for us and went back to the faculty dorm where they were staying, and I got an upgrade for the night. Under the watchful eye of Susie, who acted as my oversea mom, I gingerly packed all my things in my suitcase and backpack. After she deemed I’d follow the rules of being careful and not lifting anything, Susie left me to shower and get ready for bed since we had an early flight the next morning. It was arranged that I was to sit in a wheelchair on the way home. I wasn’t too eager to oblige but with my pain and how fast we all got through security, it was totally worth it. I held my breath until I walked out of the elevator in D.I.A to meet my family and friends waiting to see me (I insisted I walked for this part).
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In the end, having an emergency appendectomy in Italy wasn’t so bad because I learned a lot about myself. I learned how resilient I am. I also learned how to accept and ask for help. I saw how socialized medicine works with my own eyes and came to appreciate the dingy, scary appearance of the hospital that saved my life. I learned that things can change in an instant, and I saw the true beauty and kindness of the world around me. However, the lesson that impacted me the most was something Francesca asked me in the hospital. She asked if I knew this was going to happen would I still have studied abroad, and my answer was yes. She taught me that even if tragedy could happen, I wouldn’t miss out on new opportunities just because of a “what if” and I think that made me realize who I truly am.