Void

Void

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I’m small

I’m small

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GEM

GEM

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‘Monument for broken Things’

‘Monument for broken Things’

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Thanks!

Thanks!

Thank you, my blog friends, for your concern, sympathy and best wishes! Also from Annemieke. 🙂 She was pleasantly surprised by all your warm replies. This shot was taken the third day after our return from the hospital. The only thing we could do was walk and so we did. The next day our daughter came by train, to pick us up and drive us home; three days earlier as planned.

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The next Day

The next Day

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A Dark Day prt7

Next morning

When I entered room 119-120, there was a smile.. They had treated her well, and we could leave around noon. While the nurses prepared Annemieke for the take off, I managed to arrange a taxi-bus that was able to pick up our bikes as well. At 13:00 we left the hospital. The taxidriver was a non-formal nice guy. The helpful Dutch people had dropped our bikes at an old hotel, which was easy to find, and finally we reached our ferienhaus in Germany. The taxidriver reduced the price with €20,- and wished us good luck. And then we had to find out how to get along…

Next patient

A Dark Day prt6

Back from the OR

A little before 20:00 hours, Annemieke was brought to her room, bed 119. She had been in the OR for almost 3,5 hours. They had screwed a piece of metal-plate into her bones, to fix the wrist. She had to stay in the hospital that night. I could not; and the hospital closed at 21:00. So I could only stay a short while with Annemieke. The friendly lady from the reception counter helped me to find a hotel and ordered a taxi that brought me to hotel Zum Buchenberg in Rodt. In the way too large room I finally came to a halt… After a long shower and some World Cup soccer on a Flemish TV channel, that only reached the front side of my eyes, I managed to get some sleep.
The next morning I was the first to use the included breakfast; one of my loneliest ever.. Around 08:00 me and an increasing number of schoolkids were waiting for the schoolbus to Sankt Vith. The busdriver dropped me off in front of the hospital, for free; he must have noticed that I wasn’t having the happiest moments of my life…

Lonely breakfast in Rodt

Lonely breakfast in Rodt prt2

A Dark Day prt5

Prepare

While Annemieke was prepared and calmed down for the surgery, I took care of the inevitable administrative affairs and payments. My mind wasn’t in the right setting for this; so I switched to ‘first things first and everything step by step’-mode. With a mixture of French, German, English and Dutch I survived pretty well. After a while I accompanied Annemieke to the doors of the operation room, and there she went. I ended up in the waiting room of the ‘NOTAUFNAHME’ of the hospital of Sankt Vith. The radio played that feelingless, computerbased nowadays music that I’m too old for… ‘Look into my eyes and I’ll own you with them moves like Jagger, I’ve got the moves like Jagger, I’ve got the moves like Jagger’.., that kind of stuff. People came, waited and went. A man managed to get hold of the remote control of the TV that was hanging above us and he succeeded in getting the world cup soccer match on the screen. Belgium was playing. A short attempt to get the aspect ratio right failed, so there I was, looking at small, too fat soccer players, running behind an oval ball, while the reporter was speaking French and the radio was still playing it’s empty tunes. And I had ‘Wasserbüffel’, blood, ambulance-sirens, infusions, morphine, and Annemieke switching through my consciousness. At 17:00 the reception desk closed; and at 19:00 I picked up the desk-phone to ask how things were going in the operation room. They had forgotten me a little bit, but they were almost finished and I could enter the hospital through the main entrance, and go to the 2nd floor, where I found my 2nd waiting room…

The Waiting

More Waiting

A Dark Day prt4

The Fact

That morning we left our ‘Ferienhaus’ in ‘Eifelpark Kronenburger See’ and biked West. We followed the ‘Kylltal-Radweg’ to the border with Belgium. In Belgium it changed it’s name in ‘RAVeL L45a’. It was a nice ride through glowing, green hillsides. And then there was that wooden sign, while I was biking a little behind. ‘Wasserbüffel’, it said… In a wood in Belgium… Amazed I looked down the slope and there, in a yellow ocher mud-pool, they were; real water buffalo’s… It all happened in a split second; I looked forward again, to share the excitement with my wife; but she had stopped abruptly and there wasn’t enough time in that split second to avoid a collapse. She immediately knew that things were wrong; broken left wrist. Twenty minutes later we were in an ambulance, heading for the hospital in Sankt Vith, while two very nice and helpful Dutch people took care of our bikes… The people in the hospital were kind and relaxed; and pretty soon it was clear that surgery was needed… I was worried; felt guilty and had a moment that I truly hoped that it was all a bad dream; but is was not… although I didn’t have a scratch…

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