CRASH COURSE IN DANISH

I arrived in my native Denmark on July first. After spending almost fifteen months sequestered in our house in Rio de Janeiro, I had been anxious for a change of scene. I tested negative for Covid-19 upon arrival and again after 4 days in quarantine. I was finally free to move around and sent Oswaldo a happy mask-less selfie taken in front of the first supermarket I had entered in so many months. 

All this changed when minutes later I stumbled on the pavement and crashed to the ground. I found I was unable to get up, could only stretch my upper body to retrieve my glasses, shopping, and phone, all of which had fanned out on the pavement around me. I pulled myself into a sitting position and just knew I had broken the other kneecap. Concerned bystanders called an ambulance, and I called my sister and her husband who live nearby. 

The rescue team of three fit, well-trained young men dealt with me calmly and professionally, did not question my refusal to move the leg, and lifted me gently into the vehicle. While we drove, they urged me to call poor Oswaldo, who was still in bed in Rio, waiting for me to return from my shopping. My sister and husband followed in the car and into the emergency, where I was placed on a stretcher and PCR tested now for the fifth time in a week. 

 

I knew the routine from my accident in November 2020, and it was no surprise, when after a long time, throughout which I could neither eat nor drink, a doctor confirmed I would need surgery, if possible that very evening. They took me to a hospital bed, where behind a screen a distressed Bulgarian lady called out in a language no-one could understand. I waited in my bed until late, and when they brought me food, I understood I wouldn’t get surgery that night. But, they said, my fast would commence at 2am. Still the Bulgarian lady moaned and called for help, while the harried – due to a nursing strike – staff tried to guess what she needed.

 

The next morning, after a visit from the anesthetist, who spoke with a broad comforting Jutland accent, which I hadn’t heard in decades, I was wheeled off to surgery and suddenly it was like entering an ordered world, where a team was gathered around a common purpose and there was a kind of sustained excitement in the air, A nurse whispered to me I should be very confident, that I had gotten a highly respected surgeon. Lasse Bayer was tall, thin, and very authoritative as he scrutinized the 3D picture of my fracture up on a screen. The Jutland doctor laid me on my side and traveled his fingers up and down my spine demonstrating right spot to his students, while he said things like, “the vertebrae get narrow with age and it’s difficult to find a passage,” and then triumphantly, “Here’s some spinal liquid!” The nurse pressed my hand and soon I slept.

 

When I woke up the surgeon was in profile, sewing my knee with small precise stitches, chatting calmly with a colleague across my immovable legs. I felt awake and well, curious about the outcome. Dr. Bayer tied the last knot and lifted my leg in the air, while he wrapped the entire length of it in a thick bandage, over which he placed an enviable hinged brace, impossible to get in Brazil. “You will need to put your weight equally on both legs,” he said. I was incredulous. The last time the recovery had been extremely slow and painful.

And sure enough: A couple of hours later a physiotherapist turned up at my bedside. “Feel like walking a bit?” she asked. I complied and walked haltingly to the basin, where I washed my hands for the first time since I had fallen. After another night in the hospital, I was taken home on a stretcher, my only restriction not to bend the knee.

This whole episode made me reflect a lot on my attitude to Denmark and lack of comprehension of socialized medicine. I received a treatment that any Dane would get, no matter what social level. There’s an assumption that you’ll need to get well fast to get on with your life and duties, and you will achieve this with proper medication and advise, along with follow-up treatments – all free and all planned as a matter of course. There’s also very little fuss and coddling, rather an expectation that you embrace your own healing. 

 

I was a victim of my accident in Brazil, and it was hard to overcome the after-effects. Here I felt I was a partner in my own situation and handed the props to manage. Today, exactly a week after my fall, I am a living proof that, if you can, you need to get back on your feet to get well. I am grateful for this closer look at a Denmark I didn’t really know, and I’d like to apologize for having been flippant about it before. I was very lucky, and I applaud the professionals that took such good care of me.