My aim has always been to experience firsthand any elements of a trip to the Alps that Ski Famille guests could conceivably have to tackle. I’ve eaten in all of our chalets, travelled by plane train and automobile, skied all of the runs, had a swift half in most of the bars, sampled the mountain restaurants and taken lessons with a cross section of instructors.
I thought I’d covered it all but there was one important possibility I had overlooked … repatriation by Air Ambulance!
Obviously you don’t just jump aboard an Air Ambulance for a joy-ride, there is a procedure to follow. The first step is to acquire an injury. As a relatively experienced skier a trip down the “Swiss Wall”, possibly telemarking and leading a child to safety, would be the right way to do it. However, I elected to keep things simple and slipped on black ice while popping to my car for my phone. Timing wasn't great - I did it 10 minutes after arriving in Les Gets for two days of meetings.
The Les Gets Pompiers quickly and efficiently scraped me off the (very cold) road and took me down to the clinic in Cluses. The only slight set back was that, as a taller than average chap, fitting me in the back of the ambulance was a bit of a challenge. They wedged me in eventually.
Within minutes of arrival in Cluses I had been prodded, poked, x-rayed and hooked up to a morphine drip. My femur was swiftly confirmed as being “bien casse” and surgery booked in for the following morning. I was placed in bed feeling very sorry for myself with only my morphine gun for comfort - quite a gadget though!
For fear of upsetting the squeamish I’ll gloss over surgery details. Suffice to say I now have a metal plate in my hip and what looks like a 10 inch zip down my thigh. It appears they must have run out of stitching materials but luckily had a staple gun lying around. The surgeon, who looked uncannily like Christopher Walken, seems to have done a good job.
Of my six days in Cluses there is little to report. I looked out the window a bit, I looked at the wall a bit, I prodded odd looking hospital food every now and then, I started growing a beard (it's still going well and I am delighted to note there is not too much grey in it) and I practiced my Franglais with a string of doctors, nurses, physiotherapists and cleaners.
My return to Blighty was eventually confirmed for Wednesday 18th February and I started to look forward to my return trip. In my mind I was to be driven to Geneva, loaded onto a LearJet (where a sympathetic and attractive nurse would administer pain killers and dab by brow) and then enjoy a swift and smooth flight to Farnborough airport, just a few minutes from my house.
It wasn’t quite like that...
The transfer from Cluses to Geneva was pretty straightforward, apart from the fact that the nurse in the back of the ambulance had a severe squint and it was very hard to tell whether she was looking at me or the driver in the front when she spoke. Nice lady though.
On arrival in Geneva we bypassed the main airport terminal and headed straight for a side gate. Passport formalities were quickly dealt with and we sped off around the runway to the far side of the airport where an aircraft awaited my arrival.
We parked between two planes, one was very much the small sleek jet I had visualized and the other was a cross between a 70s caravan, a Volvo estate and an early Wright brothers sketch. The nurse and driver who had accompanied me from Cluses began to laugh and chat between themselves; lots of “Cette avion … a Angletterre … c’est pas vrai … ha, ha.” Within minutes the two pilots and a cheery Brit nurse arrived to confirm that this was indeed my transport for the home leg. Darn!
After about twenty minutes I was manoeuvred from one stretcher onto another and slotted into the plane. Once inside it seemed even smaller and I began to wonder whether I would have been better off staying in France for another 10 days until I could travel on a commercial flight in a wheelchair. I must, however, say that the two pilots and my nurse (Val) could not have been more friendly, cheerful and welcoming. Before we even took off Val was offering me choice goodies picked up from M&S before the outward journey and we were chatting like old friends.
Taking off from Geneva airport was a somewhat surreal experience. It’s an airport I go through at least a dozen times a year but seeing the runway through big windows on both sides of a plane narrower than my arm span as we accelerated towards take off was a very new perspective. Hurtling down the runway in our little plane surrounded by all of the commercial jets felt a bit being in a bog standard Nissan Micra at the Santa Pod drag strip.
Once we had taken off the views of Mont Blanc and the surrounding mountains was spectacular. With a cruising height of 9,000 feet there was a clear view throughout the journey – once the head end of my stretcher had been propped up on Val’s suitcase!
We didn’t head straight for the UK though – that would have been far too straight forward. First we had to stop off at a tiny airport called “St Gallen” on the edge of Lake Constance in eastern Switzerland to pick up another unfortunate. Passenger two, Jaime, had managed to break both legs (and a couple of ribs) skiing so I felt a bit of a fraud alongside him. He quickly settled in and we took off again for the UK.
The flight back to Oxford airport (the plane’s base and roughly midway between Fleet for me and Leicester for Jaime) was pretty uneventful – but long. In a little twin prop plane a headwind has a big impact and the flight took around 3 ½ hours.
On arrival in Oxford I was transferred to another ambulance – this time crewed by two cheery South African guys; “Aggg brah, you think that’s a leg break right, I seen guys up in Angola with both feet facing back towards their body…” etc etc.
The journey back to my front door ended up being just under 10 hours but boy was a I glad to be home.
Hopefully this completes required first hand experience of situations that our guests could have to encounter – and it’s not one I recommend. The easyJet check in surrounded by screaming kids will seem quite straightforward next time round.
There is a small twisted part of me that’s glad I’ve done it though…
Chris
www.skifamille.co.uk
0 comments:
Post a Comment