Roma_the_Wright_Way: brace yourself.

the wrong way: Go hiking in Germany with a partially-torn lateral ligament.
the Wright way: If you think you got an injury in a foreign country, even if it means missing a series of site visits in Rome and a day of sketching, get it checked out.

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Yesterday, our group went on a bus tour around Roma. Because I wasn't there, I'm not sure which sites they hit. If you're curious, check out our main blog, cuaarchrome2011.blogspot.com.

So what did I do with my day? Let me begin with my Sunday.
Sunday morning, instead of church, I found myself in a taxi on the way to Fatebenefratelli, the main hospital on Tiber Island. There exists an interesting history about the island and its medicinal practices. A legend about the old Roman god of health being brought to the island influenced its use as a place of healing and rest.

Well I haven't been healing for the past two weeks, but I did do a lot of resting in the waiting room for seven [7] hours [yes. seven hours.]. I sat among the old Italian geezers using their urinal bags in their wheelchairs, nuns praying a decade in a corner, a teenager with the skin around her eye changing from red and swollen to black, blue, and convex, a woman letting out hushed weeps as some liquid from her abdomen turned the pale blue of her shirt a dark dotty red, and bodies on stretchers racing by. Several Italian soap operas and fitness commercials blared in the top left of my peripheral.

At 4:45pm, I got to see the doctor. Claudia came with me to translate, and through her, I learned I needed to see a specialist. The hospital gave me a prescription for pain-killers [which as of late I've realized kick up the acidity of my poor stomach], wrapped up my knee in temporary supports, made me a different appointment, and kissed me good-bye.

Monday and Tuesday were a blur-- a mixture of frustration from limitations, knee/stomach pain, guilt from being snappy at people, and drowsiness from medication. Wednesday's knee appointment was interesting, as a French Italian-speaking doctor used Google.translate and the anatomical sketches I drew on his post-its to figure out what happened to cause the injury. [Long-story-short, I twisted my knee in Germany two weeks ago and continued to walk on it, not wanting to complain. It got really bad on Friday morning after I went running, inspired by the recent 26-mi. Rome Marathon and the marathon that passed through D.C. last week].
Then Dr. Jean and I played charades and "if i hit this, does it hurt?" to diagnose my problem. I also taught him how to say "simple" in English.
He wrote down a knee brace and topical cream to get at the pharmacia, which I picked up this morning. I feel so much better with the brace it's remarkable. I want to go running again, but I think the most I'll be doing is sunning myself on Tiber Island and sketching from a seated position.
Neither is bad, in fact. I could use a few freckles, and my sketchbook does need a touch-up. . .

We leave for Southern Italy on Monday. We're hitting Naples, Pompeii, and Capri for sure. Apparently, it's a lot of walking. On the bright side, Dave will be there! That should encourage everyone, no matter what they're dealing with at the moment. Everyone could use a little bit of home.

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Last week, Stanley Hallet, a retired CUA professor, visited and helped us out with a photography/film project, assigning us a site and a final due date. We had about two days to work on it. The purpose was to give the viewer an essence of the location with a MacBook based slide presentation, so we had to have a team member with an Apple computer. Andrew was our man for that part of the project. Andrew and I shot the photos, Rebecca did a lot of the editing, and we collectively chose the song for the background music. Here's a link to our final product:

Palazzo Spada