Hi
My wife and I spent the most wonderful week in Hedo from the 6 to the 13th. The food was great, specially the Japanese restaurant. The people were great, the staff friendly. We are kind of quiet people and enjoyed the prude beach a lot. We found the nude beach quite busy and the nude pool a bit overcrowded. Our renovated garden view room with hot tube was great. The theme nights were fun. I specially enjoyed the glow night. I like to dance and the D.J. Island's DJ was great. The whole week was perfect.
Last Sunday we got on the minibus for transfer to the airport on the way home. This is when paradise turned into hell. After getting on the bus my wife noticed the seat belt and told me that considering the driving around here maybe we should buckle up. Having been together for thirty years, I know when to shut up and obey. So we buckled up. The drive was fine, there was no passing craziness or over speeding. Ten minutes into the drive, a car coming from the opposite direction at a high rate of speed lost control in a curve and started swirling and drifting all over the road coming at us. After 5 or 6 left, right, left right, the car slammed right into us almost dead on. The car just disintegrated. The driver ejected and killed on the spot in the middle of the road beside us.
The minibus we were on was destroyed. Luckily, there was only four people including the driver in our bus. The driver sidekick was not injured, the driver himself seemed to have an slight injury to a leg. As for us it is another story. After the impact, I felt a sharp pain in my lower back, I looked at my wife to my right and saw her bleeding profusely from her forehead. She had a gash about three inches long and an inch wide. The impact was tremendous and she hit her head on the handle on the back of the seat in front of us. I went to the back of the bus to our suitcase, got a t-shirt from it and apply pressure to the cut to control the bleeding. After a while, the driver found somebody to take us to the nearest hospital (Lucea). After a twenty minutes ride from hell in the back of that old car who has never seen a wheel balancing machine in its life, we made it there against all odd. If you have never been to a local Jamaican class C hospital, keep it this way. I won't expand on the conditions in there but let's say that this is not what we are used to in Canada. After eight hours in there, the diagnosis was that there was no broken bone and we were both fit to fly home.
Because Air Canada needed something in writing about us being fit to fly, the travel company rep took us to a private hospital in Montego Bay. This is where we had our first taste of health care American style. In Canada, health care is free for all citizen. You need a band aid - free, you need open heart surgery - free, you need a check up - free. Private hospital do not exist in Canada (at least as far as I know). I now understand that a private hospital is a business and the interest of doctors might not be the patient interest. After a superficial check up from a general practitioner ($1000 each) we were told that we needed catscan ($2000 each). After the catscan my wife was told that she was ok and there was no problem with her. In my case, I was asked if I wanted to see an orthopedic doctor??? Well, I guessed since I can't interpret the result of the catsan myself. So here come the fellaw ($340). At this point I was told that I had a broken vertebrae, neurologically unstabilized and that my condition was grave, that he will admit me overnight, send me for an MRI the following day that I will need surgery and a medevac flight home afterward. If not I could have numbness in my legs forever. This is when Pierre got upset, I told him that this is not going to happen, to put a brace on me and that I was walking out of there right there an then. Well...His reaction was one of a vacuum cleaner salesman that has just been told that you are not going to buy his machine after a half an hour sale pitch. That was it. He became borderline aggressive and I was told that I was going to be paralyzed and in wheel chair for the rest of my life, no question about it. Thank you doc anyway and I was out of there. Needless to say that I did not get a brace and I did not sleep well or at all until we got home and checked by competent unbiased doctors.
After this ordeal, the travel company still did not have a fit to fly report, which they needed to put us on a plane home and finalize their contractual obligation with us. The following day they tried to get one from several doctors by phone but none agreed. So they went back to Air Canada, and, I don't know what happened then but they agreed to take us without a fit to fly report. They called us that evening and told us that was it for them and our flight was the following day.
The following day they took us to the airport and good by. After six hours of flights (through Toronto) resting my body weight on my elbows (all that gym time finally paid off), we arrived home. After a good night sleep, we went to the hospital.
It turned out that my wife suffered a concussion and I do have a broken vertebrae. According to the doctor, he sees at least one of those a week and if you are going to get a broken vertebrae this is the kind you want. I do not need MRI or surgery, some physio and rest will do the trick. Matter of fact as he was looking at the x-ray report, he showed me another of my vertebrae that has been broken in the same manner for years (it shows on a January 2015 x-ray they had on file), I was not even aware of it.
All that to say folks that next time you travel, make sure you have travel insurance (I could not believe how fast the medical bill went out of control, over $6000 in a matter of a few hours and no treatment received at all, not even an aspirin), put your seat belt on and do not hesitate to tell your driver to slow down if he goes too fast. There was no over speeding when the accident happened but I remember that there was when we were traveling to the hotel at the beginning of the week.
I regret that the memory of our vacation are not the wonderful time we had at Hedo but rather the nightmarish one we had after leaving Hedo.
Be safe
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Originally Posted by phillygirl22
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