By this point, the sores were weeping quite a bit, were bright red and had spread from a localised area and small lesions were appearing in other random parts of Sam's body. Her skin was looking like a war zone.
We eventually found the children's hospital just outside the old town of Klaipeda. As you enter into the ground floor (it was Sunday early afternoon), the initial feeling is of total disorientation. There are no signs, all the doors look the same and there seemed to be no hospital staff milling about. One parent saw me looking fairly distressed and pointed to one of many opaque doors, suggesting someone was behind it that would helpful to me. Within minutes, a helpful nurse popped out to help us, using broken English to help gather our insurance details, and getting Sam examined within what seemed like minutes. Our initial assumptions of just having Sam tidied up and on our way were dashed straight away. The all-women staff said with no hesitation that Sam would have to stay for a couple of nights in the ward upstairs and would get seen to further immediately.
This hadn't quite gone according to plan and so we made a decision quickly to find a hotel nearby for Michael, Kieran and Voodoo our dog, with me staying with Samantha in the hospital overnight. The staff were incredible, being thoroughly understanding that we had left Sam's insurance card in Switzerland but being fine with getting hold of the details later on - none of which precluded Sam being seen to without any delay. A tentative question from them was whether we were fine to pay for a private room - at a princely sum of EUR 10 a night! Coming from Switzerland, that was like asking us if we wanted to stay at the Ritz for a pound.
Samantha had a canular put in fairly quickly, with IV antibiotics administered and her sores cleaned by two fantastic nurses and a very experienced Lithuanian female paediatrician. The care was thorough and constant. We got our own cultural experience tasting Lithuanian hospital food, which was bland whilst nutritious at the same time and which introduced me to the world of buckwheat, for which I am very thankful :)
At some point during one of Sam's various wound-cleaning sessions, I mentioned to the main paediatrician that our trip home would entail 25 hours in the car to get back to Switzerland. Her face dropped and she didn't seem delighted about that prospect. She also showed me a picture on a phone of what she believed Sam had - SSSS - or Staphylococcal Scalded Skin Syndrome (do not look at pictures of this if you have a weak stomach). I told this to Michael, who had a brainwave about calling Rega, for which we have been a loyal contributor for many years. I laughed at him, telling him "good luck" and that I was fairly sure Sam had to be practically half-dying for us to have a chance of a repatriation.
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Turns out the initial call to Rega to speak with the first responder was a much more pleasant experience than either of us would have imagined. The man, who spoke impeccable English, was warm and compassionate and understood clearly that Sam was on the mend and not critical, but that we had valid concerns about her enduring a sweaty trip back in the car over two nights of stopping. He said he would refer the case to his medical colleague to make a further assessment and told us to hang tight. At this point, one could be forgiven for thinking that like most things, that might well be the end of the road. Not so with Rega. A German-sounding female doctor called us back within a few hours and went over the details of Sam's admission and condition with us. She also was kind and considerate, spending plenty of time on the line and never once making us feel rushed or unimportant. She said she would try to contact our Lithuanian paediatrician to have more specific details but that her preference was in any case to find a way to get Sam home via plane.
Again, she told me she would be in touch in hours and the sceptic in me perhaps didn't wish to hold my breath. But again, Rega stuck to their word and called me back directly. The same doctor explained that she had been unable to get hold of the doctor (which was actually fairly common) but that she was making a judgment call to get Sam repatriated to avoid risk of reinfection and a likely uncomfortable journey home for the little girl. She updated me on the logistics solution - and that whilst a seat on a commercial flight the intitial plan, it was no longer in play and they were going to collect us in a Rega airplane on their way back from Sweden to pick up a poor woman who had gotten somehow injured. Details followed quickly, with clear instructions that a local ambulance would collect us at 2pm the following day, driving us directly to Palanga airport, which was less than 30km away from Klaipeda (an infinitely superior option to getting to Vilnius, which was hours away).
The day of the pick-up, we received texts confirming when an ambulance was coming to collect us and true to form, an ambulance actually arrived earlier than expected, at 1.30pm. The ambulance driver and his assistant spoke broken English but they were smiling the whole time and full of warmth for the both of us. The driver told me the airport was usually an hour away but he would have us there in 25 minutes. I thought he was joking but clearly, he was on a mission and had the sirens on the whole time so he could drive as if he was in a speedway race. Admittedly there were times I thought we would need an ambulance for our ambulance but half an hour later, we arrived safely at Palanga Airport. A man who appeared to be running the whole airport was waiting for us at the staff entrance and we had a smooth handover, complete with a photo for Sam with her hero ambulance driver.
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The airport director welcomed us and explained what was happening. For folks who travel quite a bit, it was fun to be ushered through all the parts of the airport that were clearly not for standard passenger access! We ended up arriving at an empty gate with duty free all to ourselves, waiting for our little Rega air ambulance to arrive, while the airport director hovered around so he could escorts us when the airplane arrived.
Eventually some commercial passengers showed up out of nowhere, bound for what appeared to be the only outbound flight of the whole day from Palanga. After a fairly short wait, the Rega airplane touched down in the runway and we were brought over to the crew. The pilot took my baggage and once again, we were met with nothing other than kind and attentive faces who made us feel taken care of from the get-go.
We climbed into the airplane and what felt like basically a very luxurious private jet, set up with no more than 6 seats and two stretchers accompanied by plenty of medical equipment. By this point, Samantha's wounds were very much on the mend and so we sat like normal passengers in the seats. I don't quite know how to describe my feeling at this point but it was almost like you had won the lottery and somehow felt bad for it. I had always assumed you had to be on the brink of death or that your leg had to be on the verge of coming off in order to use such a service. And so I felt quite overwhelmed and borderline embarrassed, which the doctors detected! They told me not to feel bad; a lovely Dutch doctor explained that this is standard Rega practice and that they had consulted amongst themselves on what decision to make given the circumstances and that as medics, they preferred to err on the side of caution and to avoid subjecting Samantha to a very long car journey and the risk of re-infection. I reassuringly settled into my seat and within barely half an hour, the intensive care nurse was offering Sam and I a salmon poke bowl and prosciutto pasta for lunch!
Given that Sam was not in a critical condition and that the doctors decided from the outset that they didn't need to clean her wounds on the plane (possibly because her screaming might also not be very helpful for the pilots), I settled into a pleasant conversation with the all-female medical crew (2 doctors and an intensive care nurse).
The medics all take time out of their day jobs to do a week/2-week stint with Rega, and these two doctors had been doing it for about 10 years or so already. They explained that Rega wasn't just about sending helicopters to fetch people who had broken a leg while skiing. In fact, they estimated that the "maladie to accident ratio" was possibly close to 50:50. Meaning that many have been repatriated from faraway locations for medical conditions where the Rega staff were concerned that the local medical infrastructure may not be able to provide an adequate level of care. And where they preferred to make a judgment call to bring the person back to Switzerland so there was peace of mind they would get the treatment they needed. In rare instances, the doctors had been to Australia to collect someone - in which case four pilots rotate on the trip and hence the need for the bunk bed near the cockpit! Thailand appeared to be a regular destination for repatriation too. As was in our case, it happens often that local doctors do not pick up the calls Rega are making to contact them to get more details on the patient's condition (sometimes intentionally), and so Rega staff consult with each other and come to a decision themselves based on their interpretation of the facts. This has occasionally involved asking patients themselves to send through photos of wounds and other things so they can make more informed decisions.
Apparently, almost 70% of the Swiss population donate to Rega, and the current leadership are keen to keep the fees unchanged from previous years, in part to make the membership more accessible to most. This is an unbelievably positive gesture when you consider fees for other services tend to increase with inflation or other factors. And yet the family membership - chf 70 a year - is incredibly low given the high Swiss cost of living (it would buy about 2 and a half very average pizzas in our beloved country)...
After enjoying a strawberry cheesecake and espresso (another pinch-me moment), we shortly afterwards landed in Zurich. The flight was barely 2.5 hours and smooth the whole way. We taxiied into the Rega hangar, which was a real experience in itself, seeing mechanics hard at work servicing the planes - and seeing the ambulances already stationed in the hangar ready to transport the woman from Sweden and Sam and myself. At this point, I told the doctors my husband would be dying of envy (he sadly got the short straw of the 25-hour drive home with 7-yr old, dog and stinky tent). At this point, the wonderful crew magically fished out some Rega pens and postcards as a souvenir for him-- yet another heart-melting gesture from a truly fantastic Rega crew.
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We were met by a super-friendly young Swiss German paramedic pair - with impeccable English and efficient care - who gave Sam a little lion doudou and even stopped on the hard shoulder to put her in the stretcher so she could have a more comfortable sleep. 3.5 hours later, we arrived at Nyon hospital, where the poor paramedics (who were understandably tired and spoke zero French) were made to escort us directly to the paediatric ward despite knowing little about the whole situation and being unable to explain much. In any case, it seemed the Nyon hospital crew were expecting a 5-yr old to be arriving from Lithuania, because as soon as we showed up they knew who we were and had already prepared a luxurious new private room for Samantha, complete with her name on the door in an adorable kid-friendly print. We didn't see the resident paediatric doctor til almost 11pm - seems like that summer evening was a busy one for kids in Urgences - but it had been assumed we would stay the night, which we did. The next day, the hold-up on discharge was explained by the fact that the antibiotics prescribed to Sam in Lithuania were not available in Switzerland, and so there was some consultation to decide on the best alternative given the Lithuanian one had been working so well. We got to satisfyingly watch England beat Australia in the Women's World Cup in the comfort of Samantha's hospital room and then made our way home on the mountain train. All in all, the most incredible medical repatriation trip home, where every single medical professional gave us time and attention and warmth and where it felt seamless from beginning to end. I am blown away by Rega and would happily tell everyone in Switzerland to donate and keep up what is a tremendous cause; a service the Swiss should be really proud of.
A short video of Sam's journey
Written by Larissa on Dec 30th, 2023 10:15 pm #1