Practitioner to Patient. Part 1.

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?What started as an adventure weekend away has now turned in to a new longer-term adventure. Same idea though: research, planning and executing.
So instead of a weekend of mountain biking and hiking, coming back refreshed; I come back with a fresh wrist fracture…
What happened? Matt and I were mountain biking in Denver, I went over the handlebars on the way down and my wrist took the worst of it.
If anyone would like to see the ride I did this on…. http://www.singletracks.com/bike-trails/north-table-mountain.html
I plan to blog about my healthcare experience as I see things from a patient and Physio perspective. Hopefully I learn a few things through this process… Which sounds much better than sitting at home and feeling sorry for myself.
So rewind to Friday night, we walked about 4km to the car, made our way to a hospital (yahoo for out of country insurance!), got an xray, a soft splint and were on our way.
Good things about US healthcare:
– it was quick. We were in and out in 2.5 hours
– they showed me the xrays and directions for followup.
Things that could improve:
– it wasn’t overly efficient. I had blood pressure taken a few times and they had some trouble with the insurance
– they weren’t overly encouraging, using words like “bad break” and “surgery”. So while I would like a realistic picture of what is going on… They could be priming me for persistent pain if I didn’t have the background I do.
So what have I been doing? Researching the injury (AKA Dr. Google — but evidence-based only), planning (childcare, work schedule, etc) and executing (AKA delegating at this stage).

The rest of the weekend was pretty uneventful. Some walking with my soft cast and sling, a ball game, driving through the mountains with my husband carrying everything for me. C?ertainly c?ould have been worse 😉

Next up: more testing, a real cast, and figuring out logistics.

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