The 4:30am Nasty Fall In The Shower On The Day I Was Leaving…

Editor’s Note: This post contains no information about Kerrie. If you would prefer to only read posts that contain information about Kerrie please check back at a later time.

London is a very expensive city. Probably one of the most expensive in the world.. if not the most expensive city. So, to save a little money my friends and I decided we would book the cheapest hotel we could find.. within a certain area of the city. My criteria? I wanted to be within walking distance of Buckingham Palace. Even if it meant a really crudy room for a cheap price. What does the room really matter? We aren’t going to be in the room that much anyway. We’re going to London to see the city, not evaluate the inside of a hotel room. Besides, when I go on these recruiting trips I usually stay in five star hotels and eat at the most amazing restaurants ( all paid for by the work and travel organizations 🙂 ) It won’t kill me to “slum” it for a few days in London!

The cheapest room we could find would cost $435 for three nights. For this price we would get a very small, very smelly room with two beds,a chair, a tv, a sink in the corner and a coffee pot.. and when I say small I mean very, very small. We barely had room for our luggage in between the beds and the wall. Good thing we are good friends who have known each other a while and don’t mind sharing beds… and it’s a good thing we don’t mind sharing a bathroom/shower with people we don’t know. Notice I did not mention our room including its own bathroom.

This is a very common thing in Europe. It would never fly here, unless it was a youth hostel, but when you book a room in a hotel you need to specify how many people in the room and whether or not you want a private bathroom in your room. These are more expensive, so we went for the shared facilities.

Just outside our room there was a small hallway with a small bathroom containing a toilet and sink. Just a little further down the small hall was the shower. Not a room with a shower.. the shower. Open a door and you’re in the shower. Just a small, rusted lock keeping the shower door closed between you and the hallway.

So.. it’s 4:00am Monday morning ( 11:00pm Sunday night here), on the day that I’m leaving, and I take all my suitcases, etc. out into the hall. I need to be able to take a shower, and get ready to catch my cab, without waking up my friends. The rooms too small to do this without waking them, so taking everything into the hall is the best option. It’s the middle of the night, so I won’t have to worry about my stuff being in the hallway. Who the hecks going to be awake and out in the hall?

I’ve got to get in the shower and really hoping the water is warm. It’s been mediocre, at best, and it’s just too early in the morning for a cold shower. I strip down in the hallway and walk into the shower. Hey.. it’s after 4:00am.. whose going to be awake and in the hallway? So why not just get naked in the hall and get into the shower? ( My mother is probably shaking her head right now..) I turn the little, rusted lock on the door and turn on the water.. just a little, so that I can wait until it get’s warm enough to get underneath it. Once the water’s warm, I turn it up and.. oh my God, it’s so hot I burn my hand trying to get the water turned off.. it’s too hot to get to it to turn it off and I am panicking and trying to turn the knob on the door to get out of the shower. I make it out and am standing, naked, in the hallway, looking at my hand turning red. Grab my towel and go into the other room to run my hand under cold water.

Damn, what to do? I need to take a shower and the water is so hot I can’t get to the fawcett to turn more cold water on. After several attempts, from the hallway, I finally get the water cooled down enough to get underneath it. It’s almost as if there isn’t any cold water this morning. I look down at the bar of soap, on the floor, and think to myself.. “I shouldn’t have that on the floor. I could slip on it..” but there’s no place to put it, so it will have to stay on the floor. Get the shampoo in my hair, go to rinse.. and the water’s too darn hot again. What the heck am I going to do? Wait?! I’ve got a coffee cup sitting next to my suitcase. I can use that to rinse the shampoo out of my hair and won’t have to get underneath the showerhead to do it. That should work. If the water is still too hot to do it this way I will try to rinse my hair in the sink in the bathroom. So.. I open the door, peek out to make sure no one is in there and step into the hallway again.

I walk over to my suitcase, and am looking for the coffee cup, when I notice the light is on in the bathroom. Shoot.. someone’s in there. Then I hear the toilet flush and the water running in the sink. I’m standing, naked, in the hallway with shampoo running down my face.. so I run to the shower.. throw open the door and hop in…. that’s when I slip on the soap.

I fall hard.. Really hard. Did I mention the shower had a small cement base, about 4 inches high, that keeps the water from running into the hall? The calve of my left leg slams agains the 4 inch high cement wall and my left thigh and butt cheek hit the floor of the shower. It hurts so bad I’m stunned for a second and then I realize I am laying naked on the shower floor.. the door to the shower is open, my legs are hanging out into the hallway and whoever is in the bathroom has opened the door and is out in the hall.

I’m not sure I can get up, let alone stand, and I’m afraid I may have fractured my leg.. but I jump up and manage to slam the door closed. That’s when I notice I am still holding the coffee cup.. I managed to do all of this and NOT break the coffee cup. I’m in pain.. I’m seriously injured.. but at least I can get the shampoo out of my hair!

I have no idea who was in the bathroom, and it may have even been one of my friends, but I wasn’t going to lay naked, on the floor of the shower, waiting to find out.

I managed to finish my shower, practically on one leg, and just stood there feeling like an idiot. I couldn’t help thinking.. “I’m 40 years old, I’m in fricking England, I’m in serious pain, I’m a little scared.. and I want my Mommy.”

I get out of the shower, get dressed and then stand in the hall trying to figure out what to do. What I probalby should have done was woken up my friends and told them I needed to go to a hospital ( Gregor..if you and Polonca are reading this now you are probably very upset that I didn’t tell you.. Kyrzysztof.. I know you’re not upset.. you’re probably waiting to tell me how stupid I am)

If I go to the hospital I miss my 6:30am train back to Paris. If I miss my train back to Paris I miss my plane back to Detroit. If I miss my plane back to Detroit I don’t get to see Kerrie today. My legs not turning too black, I’m only a little faint, the pain is managable.. I say goodbye to my friends and hobble up the stairs to meet my cab. When I get into the cab I consider asking him to take me to the hospital… but go to the train station instead.

Two hours on the train with my leg propped up.. get to the train station, in Paris, and have to take the subway to the airport. A French man I met, a few days earlier, taught me enough French to ask for my subway ticket, so I manage to get the ticket I need and walk the five million miles of tunnels to the train platform. Then sit for another 45 minutes with my leg propped up on my suitcase.

Funny thing about the subway station at the airport.. all the escalators go down. If you need to go up you have to walk up the stairs. I needed to do three flights.. with a bad leg and really heavy suitcases. Going through all this reminds me of my fall, last year, in the train station in Prague ( For anyone who knows that story, I still have the little scar next to my right eye brow).. the “Souvenier” I’m going to have from this fall is going to be much bigger than the Prague fall.

Finally get on the plane and make an 8 1/2 hour flight home. Leg throbbing most of the way. Blood clots briefly entered my mind, but did I get up and walk around? No! My only thought was to stay off the leg.. incase I had a hairline fracture.

Made it home, told Mom I should probably go the ER, but it really didn’t seem that bad.. so went to see Kerrie instead. Didn’t go to the ER until Thursday night.. after my friend, Colleen, had me all freaked out about people on long plane rides getting blood clots.. and when the numbness in my fingers and toes hadn’t gone away.

I told the doctor the whole story and he couldn’t help laughing at me.. then asked if the money I saved on the cheap hotel room was going to be worth what the ER visit was going to cost me. We decided next time it would be better if I paid for the private shower in the room.

Tests showed no hairline fractures, but blood tests showed possibility of a clot.. so they decided to give me a nice, little shot of a blood thinner.. in the stomache. When I asked the doctor if it was absolutely necessary the doctor said, “Oh it won’t hurt that bad.” Of course I asked if he’d ever had one.. because I have had SEVERAL and they’re not fun. Doing them for my sister is one thing.. doing it just as a precaution is another. But the doctor convinced me I needed it.. so now I have another nice, little bruise on my stomache.. but every time I look at it, it reminds me of Kerrie 🙂

More tests, on Friday, showed no clot…so good news there…

Gregor, Polonca and Krszysztof.. next time, we pay the extra money to get a shower in the room 🙂

Jenn