Today's new word: TALA. splint. TALA. (to be read in a linguaphone voice) So, there I am, fannying about with the unworking well-pump up at the farm... can't remember exactly how or what happened, but KERCHUNK the clip holding the ratchet wheel comes away and WHEEEEEEEEE goes the turning handle and CRACK goes the side of my hand... "GIRLS!!!!" who are about thirty metres away on their new bikes that they have learned to ride in the space of an afternoon, "Time to put your bikes away, I think I may need to go and get my hand xrayed!" "UH?" "I think I may have broken my finger!" "GASP!!, B, mummy's broken her finger! Quick, we have to go!!!" screeched M, big sister. B immediately starts to cry "mummy's broken her finger off?!?!" "no, she just broke it, silly!" shouts M. B immediately loses all urgency and slows to a slug's pace putting away her bike. We wait in the car as my little finger swells to dangerous proportions. B gets in the car, and we drive to the gate... "Can you help your sister close the gate, for mummy, please?" "Oh, I so TIRED mummy." Six year olds, ain't they great? ---- It doesn't hurt too much and I can still bend it, so don't go until later to the hospital, pulling a shameless cunha with my sogra (cunha: favour via family/friends in certain positions or with favours owed... it's kind of the fuel of Portugal) to get seen relatively quickly (within an hour, rather than what a broken finger really deserves, six hours) and to see the ortho-bods that she knows and regards highly. I book in and am reminded of how much I despise hospitals and despise being a patient (which in Portuguese is a "doente" which is far more descriptive: doente=sick person), remembering the horror of the last time I was stuck in one for five days, giving birth to B, giving birth in manner already out of date twenty years ago, being treated like cattle, being treated like an idiot because my Portuguese wasn't particulary brilliant (you try speaking Portuguese well when someone has just given you a surprise induction, surprise shaving, surprise enema, surprise no-husband-allowed policy, surprise six groaning women in a room with not a nurse or doctor in sight, surprise epidural (what's wrong with nitrous oxide? I ask... oh, that's dangerous! they say), surprise legs up in stirrups (what century? have you heard of gravity?), surprise no-screaming policy, surprise "I'm a sixty year old gynae-obs, I'm going to give you a HUGE episiotomy whether you need one or not, no I'm not going to wait and see", surprise "your husband can't come in while you're naked, your legs are up in stirrups and you've just pushed a bowling ball out of your front bottom...but your brother in law can come in because he works here... and the door opens straight onto the gorey picture", surprise "these fucking foreigners, don't understand a fucking word" attitude from half the nurses, surprise cuttlefish in ink for supper and no escape... etc.)... yes, I'm still bitter. I'm immediately regarded as an idiot once my id comes out while booking in... I can't hear through glass windows, can only lip read... and my portuguese lip reading isn't up to scratch.... so, because I'm British, he thinks I can't speak Portuguese. In triage, an auxilliary comes up to me and says, "ooh, you've got a big tala there" "What?" say I, "She's English, she can't understand you" says the triage nurse. "Yes, I bloody can, I just don't understand one of the words you said... what was it?" "TALA. TA-LA" she says, prodding at the rather large cardboard splint I had cut for myself with big scissors in the wrong hand. "Right, thank you." Once inside a hospital you're at the mercy of the nurses, whether pulling a cunha or not... and some nurses get really mean (entirely reasonably in my opinion) if you are pulling a cunha, unless, of course, it is they who are being cunha'd (I think cunhas require a post of their own. Oddly, I've never written a cunha post... stay tuned)... The thing about being in the casualty/urgência system that I hate the most is the desperate internal struggle. On one (broken) hand, feeling bad for everyone in more trouble/pain/gore than I am, feeling really bad that people have to give up their dignity to lie on a stretcher in the middle of a corridor, wanting their family or wanting to be left alone (I'm the latter), wanting to cry or to vomit without an audience (gawking is a favoured sport in these parts) and on the other (unbroken) hand, wanting to gawk horribly myself at the various wounds and ailments and horrors. I usually manage to restrain myself though and stick to the feeling bad bit. Two or three jobsworths, a handful of nice people, and the rudest radiographer in the world later and I discover to my genuine surprise that I have in fact broken my little finger, right at the knuckle joint.  So, my right hand little finger is in a TA-LA for the next month. Bugger it. You will be enormously relieved to be reminded that I'm CANHOTA/left handed. CAN-HO-TA
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