Another night in Bangkok

I wasn’t even in the country a week before being medically evacuated to Bangkok. Last Tuesday I slipped and fell and hurt my left knee. I didn’t think it was anything serious at first because I could walk fine. Later in the day though, it started to hurt to bend it and it got very swollen, to the point that I couldn’t bend my leg at all. By the end of the day, I couldn’t put any weight on my left leg at all. I thought it was just because of the swelling and iced my knee. The next morning I still couldn’t walk on it so I went to the Australian Clinic. Dr. Ben told me I’d ruptured the ligament (my ACL) in my knee and the swelling was due to blood collecting inside my knee. He drained about 90ml of blood from my knee and put a temporary splint on my leg but that was all he could do. So then he booked me a flight to Bangkok to be checked out further. It all happened pretty quickly. Dr. Ben made it seem like it was some kind of big emergency to get me to Bangkok as soon as possible but all they did in Bangkok was X-ray my knee and put a better splint on it. I spent the night in the hospital and then flew back to Vientiane the next afternoon. On the down side, my career as a professional athlete is over and my nice official 2 month visa has been used up (because it was only a single-entry visa) and now I’m on a 15-day tourist visa. On the plus side, I managed to score a sponge bath from 2 Thai nurses.