Well Nacho and I are three days into our Austrian adventure and it has been more drama than we both expected…

It started off with me feeling completely exhausted, emotional and physically drained. I was on call on the last day of work. I did not quite have the foresight to change this and just hoped that I would not be burdened with a child protection medical to complete and process in one afternoon. That of course was a ridiculous thought. So after a morning of trying to write the letters I know needed writing before the end of the day, calling parents and writing to GPs, imagine my horror when at half past twelve, I’m informed of a child protection medical that is due to take place. So I spend the next hour speaking to social worker to find out why they had not confirmed the apppointment earlier in the week, what they needed from us and the usual begging for the relevant strategy meeting notes. I then have to spend half an hour trawling through the medical notes and setting up the template for the report I know will have to be written before I leave the office. It is the first time I have completed a medical assessment writing straight onto a report template. It took a great deal of mental energy to summarise there and then what the parents told me, some of which was long an convoluted.

I finished the medical. I wrote up the report. I corrected two othe medical reports that had been waiting for me since Wednesday. I dragged myself out of the building and into the carpark, where my car was the last one standing, turned on the ignition and sped away down the M1.

The next 24 hours was a blur of packing and repacking, standing on the scales, sans and con luggage, trying to tidy up (I hate coming back to a messy flat), paying a few overdue bills online and charging up electrical gadgets. The trip to the airport was uneventful and before we knew it we had landed in Salzburg, Austria.

It was cold and dark when we got off the plane. So I had no frames of reference, I felt completely disorientated and by that time the cold I was desperately trying to keep at bay with paracetamol, caffeine and phenylepherine (aka Boots Cold and flu relief ) burst upon my body with full force. It was all I could do but drag my sore, sorry and aching body into my hotel bed. The story did not end there as I would wake every few hours unable to breath – roll on, or rather massage on the Vick’s vapour rub.

Needless to say, day 2 of the holiday was spent also in the hotel room, waking only to drink the Lemsip equivalent and stare mournfully out of the window at the moutain scenery I would not be experiencing. However by the end of the day I was starting to feel more myself. I managed to finish Michelle Obama’s book ‘Becoming’. Afterwards I felt that perhaps I should not have been floored by a common-or-garden cold. I felt that I should have been just a bit stronger. However, I am grateful for the rest that I was forced to take. It does mean however that I still have not really learnt the lessons from my last illness less than a month ago.

Before, I had a chance to leisurely think about what I might do about changing my work situation, a I heard a frantic knock on the hotel room door. That’s weird,I thought to myself, Nacho has his own keycard, it can’t be him. I ignored it and returned my focus to the book on my Kindle I was reading at the time. The knocking began again and this time Nacho shouts out that its him and I should open the door. I’m worried, I rushed to the door there he is looking very pale and in pain, “I think I broke my wrist”. He holds up is limp malshapened limb for me to view. Yes, it does indeed look like something terrible has happened to it. So off we rushed to the hospital in a taxi (€11) and work our way through what appears to be a slick and effiecient Austrian health care system. We were in and out within an hour. He has fractured the distal part of his radius and now has cast from the elbow to the wrist.

So this sports injury has scuppered, in part our holiday plans. I am thankful that he did not hurt anywhere else and he is still ‘whole’. We now have four days to explore and enjoy as best as we can this little part of Austria.