Fleeting visit to the UK

After being discharged from Hospital and greeted by my mum, we left and got a bus the next day to Istanbul.

My mum was coming to Istanbul anyway for a few days so everything was already booked.

We spent a couple of days seeing the sights whilst redressing my wounds every morning which were healing well.

The time came to decide what to do, after consideration I decided to come back to the UK for a couple of weeks to heal up and then fly back out to carry on from Nepal.

The flight back to the UK was on Friday the 13th and it certainly lived up to its name…

Upon arriving at the airport in good time there was already a huge queue for baggage check in. Eventually I arrived at the desk and was asked about the stitches in my head.

I showed them the discharge letter but this wasn’t good enough for them, they wanted a letter from the doctor saying that I was safe to fly.

Given that I was at Istanbul airport and I was treated at a hospital hundreds of miles away in Greece, my heart sank. After a quick search online you’re safe to fly 7-14 days after having a head injury and it had been 6. Other options of getting back to the UK was by train which would take 2 days…

Google gave me the phone number of the hospital and even the optimist in me couldn’t predict what happened. The doctor who treated me happened to be at reception so answered the phone.

After what felt like hours, he sent me an email with an official document to say that I was safe to fly.

As the gate was closing, I did the classic run through the airport and thankfully they let me on.

The flights weren’t too bad and I managed to just make the connecting flight despite a delayed take off.

Back in the UK I spent a couple of days resting up and seeing family.

On Monday I needed to get the 10 stitches out. Thankfully the doctor in Greece did a really good job and the scars are neat and not that noticeable.

Next on the list was sorting out my tooth. I went to my normal dentist in Cookham and managed to squeeze me in and did a fantastic job, you wouldn’t even know anything had happened to it.

It’s been almost 2 weeks since the accident and I’ve gotten back on the (exercise) bike and am just waiting for my hand to heal up before I can fly back out again. It’s been nice to be home but I’m itching to get back out there and see what South East Asia has to offer.