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After a couple of weeks of observation and recuperation in the Kruschev Hospital, Cristina was sent home with her mother to take care of her. She was loaded on a flat wide stretcher with straps so she would fall off and another ambulance took her. It was a newer American made ambulance with spring loaded heavy duty shocks so the ride was a million times smoother. |
The doctor instructed her to be on a catheter so she wouldnt wet the bed and showed her mother Irina how to insert it as a Soviet-paid nurse had done that in the previous years in the other hip spicas but the government couldn't afford those home visits anymore and one could only get such service if you were one of the super-wealthy of Cristina's family was not.
Once the ambulance workers carried Cristina up 2 flights of stairs, she was put gently in her bed, where she knew she would have to spend the next 4 months in that cast, with only her sister and mother to turn her so she wouln't get bedsores. Even though she was a quiet , cooperative patient, Cristina grew restless and after 2 months of long bedrest and immobility, she somehow managed to slide herself off the bed, dragging herself with her strong arms across the floor and grabbed her old pair of well-used crutches.
She pulled herself upright with very little noise and using a flipping sort of motion with her shoulders., she made her way to the stairs thinking she could hop down. This was the very last thing she was aware of. As she slid toward the edge of the stairs she put one crutch down the next stop and lurched forward. Her body went the wrong way and Cristina stumbled down the stairs, breaking almost every uncovered bone in her body and breaking part of the cast near the shins where the bar reinforced the cast. She bumped her head and passed out. Irina heard the loud banging noise of Cristina's body tumbling down inside her heavy plaster cast (it weighed 2/3 of Cristina's weight,it being 75 pounds and Cristina just under 115 pounds. Irina screamed when she saw Cristina's broken body at the foot of the stairs and it alarmed Marta, her sister who also ran over, being roused from a restful sleep.
They called for an ambulance and another ride to the hospital was coming for Cristina, it was almost like a repeat television show, except every bone was screaming in agony in Cristina's body!
