I wanted to finalize the JBR with our experiences of being in Bali and using a wheelchair. Jackie has neck problems (autonomic nervous dystrophy) which means using her arms causes a lot of muscle pain in her shoulders and neck. The doctors put her on crutches. This puts all kinds or pressure on her shoulders and meant she had pain not just from the ankle, but from her neck and shoulders as well.
The hotel had wheelchairs which were a god send. I sometimes wonder why people say someone is confined to a wheel chair when in reality a wheelchair keeps someone from being confined. It allows a certain amount of freedom rather than confinement.
The hotel was really good about it. First the people were so solicitous about Jackie, ie. What happened? Was she okay? Was it a foreigner who hit her or someone from Bali? The staff at the Nusa Dua Beach Hotel couldn't do enough for her.
The last half of our vacation involved a lot of time at BIMC, but we had time away from it as well. Jackie spent only one night in the hospital (Friday night) and the rest of the time was free to go.
The accident happened on Wednesday. When we got back to the hotel, we wanted to go somewhere nice for dinner. I had a booklet of possible places to eat at which I had made up and that is when we decided to go to LaScala. LaScala looked nice (picture from the internet) and they would send a van to pick you up. I called and asked about how many steps they had and if they had room on the first floor. They answered that they had two steps to the restaurants first floor and they had room.
They sent the car and we went to the restaurant. It was actually quite a nice place. They had a welcome drink which Jaclyn then ordered an additional one for dinner. But using the crutches was very difficult for her and aggravated the amount of pain she experienced. We knew then we needed to use the wheel chair whenever possible.
Thursday night we just had the snacks that came with the happy hour. Jaclyn wasn't very hungry.
On Thursday we found that the hotel wheelchair really allowed us to have mobility around the resort. We would go to breakfast in it and then to the beach. Jackie needed to keep her foot elevated otherwise the blood would throb in the ankle. The NDBH allowed you to take unlimited number of towels. We normally took two a piece, but with the need to elevate Jackie's right leg I took three additional towels for that purpose. We had a nice shady spot on the beach and I could roll Jaclyn along the pathway by the ocean that went by the Westin, the Laguna, and the Melia Bali.
We did this trip a number of times and got an opinion of each of these hotels. The Westin looked very nice. It had a number of Bales available for guests, but I'm not sure how they worked. It looked as if some were more posh than others and they generally had reserve signs on them. The beach area was nice, but the beach was smaller than the NDBH. The Laguna was similar to the Weston but the beach got smaller yet. Finally the Melia had a very small beach. There was room for only one row of lounge chairs. We could only go to the Melia because a fence separated the path and you had to go on the sand to go around it.
It was after Jackie's accident that we started to take a lot of pictures. We have a number of them where Jackie took them from the wheelchair and her foot was in a lot of these pictures. We decided to call these our footcam pictures and this became something of an ongoing joke.
On Friday Jackie had the operation in the afternoon. We again went to breakfast and the beach in the morning and checked into the hospital in the afternoon. They did a cat scan when we checked in took blood and did other tests. Jackie was allowed breakfast but not lunch (the operation was at 4 pm and she needed to fast for eight hours). They also had her select dinner for after the surgery (she said the food was actually very good at BIMC). They got her in the room and hooked up the IV and started putting saline in her. At four they took her into surgery.
The surgery was scheduled for about 2 hours. Jackie told me to go grab dinner. I notice across the street from BIMC was a department store. I went across to see it and found an entire shopping center that was very western looking once you got inside. There were a number of fast food type restaurants and I grabbed something to eat there. I also went to get some more Advil (they looked it up and showed me the equivalent). Jackie always travels with a fair amount of Advil because of her shoulder pain, but she was going through them faster due to the ankle injury. I didn't know if these would work as well so I bought just 20 pills.
The surgery was a success. Jackie had opted for a spinal block and the Anesthesiologist put her in a light sleep for the operation. As soon as she was out of the surgery I went to the recovery room and she was already awake and feeling no pain as the spinal block hadn't worn off. During the night they gave her pain medication via the IV and the next day we had to wait until the pain meds in the IV were empty.
I wanted to cheer her up on Saturday, so I called and made reservations at diMare for dinner. I also hired a driver for the day. There is shopping just outside the main gate at Nusa Dua. I went over to scout things out to see if Jackie would want to shop there and if she could.
They had some nice merchandise she would be interested in but the big thing was could she go there in a wheelchair. The regular sidewalk was a mess, but behind the fence there was another sidewalk that was level without broken stones and holes. I could push the wheelchair smoothly.
I knew she couldn't have the normal massage, but she had a hair crème bath earlier in the week and she was very happy with it. I thought a nice hair crème bath would cheer her up and let someone else do her hair for dinner.
So the driver took me to BIMC at 3 PM to get her. She didn't get released until 4:15 (had to wait for the pain medicine to be used up in the IV). We then got in the car and I asked the driver if he knew some nice places that did the hair crème. We went to four different places and they all were very nice. However, we found out that many places do beauty shop services only on the second floor up a flight of steps. There was no way Jackie could negotiate these steps. So we finally had the driver take us back to the hotel where Jackie fixed her own hair and he came back to pick us up at seven PM.
Fortunately our driver had been to diMare before because it was not anyplace you would simply stumble on. It was through Jimbaran and down about 5 miles of semi-paved road. I had asked the Restaurant about steps and he indicated there were a couple of steps, but they would help us down them. Well a couple turned out to be about 20 to 30 and they were all downhill to the restaurant. Jackie had to negotiate them on her crutches (we took the wheel chair to the steps and carried it down to the bottom of the steps and put Jackie back in it).
When we were done with dinner we asked if there was any other way back not involving all the steps. It turned out there was another way up/down that was ramps (steep and the busboy did help us negotiate it in the wheelchair). We got back in the car and headed back to the NDBH.
Sunday we needed to check out. We had a 2355 flight from Bali to Narita (Tokyo) and then back to Denver. First we got a late checkout (3 pm). We also made reservations at Chess at the hotel for dinner at 6 pm. Went through our normal breakfast and beach in the morning. At 11 am we went out the main gate to shop. Jackie did enjoy the shops and bought a couple of batik scarves and some interesting placemats. We had fun bargaining with the folks and got some pictures afterwards of the people all smiles because they got a good price and we negotiated about 30% off the initial price. We knew that was overpaying, but this was more than shopping, it was goodwill and entertainment.
We checked out at 3 pm and got a cab over to Mureno's Spa for that hair crème bath and a massage for me. I asked specifically if the hair crème bath was on the first (ground) floor and was told yes by the woman at Mureno's Spa. In fact, I asked several times telling her my wife was in a wheelchair and couldn't negotiate steps (did this especially after diMare the night before). We had a 4 pm appointment. Mureno's is not an easy place to find and our driver got near it and kept missing it. He was on his cell phone getting directions and we finally go there about 20 minutes late. When we got there we found that the place for the hair crème bath was on the second floor about 13 narrow steps up. Needless to say I was frustrated and asked the woman to call their sister resort (check the website for that name). She did that and said they would pay the taxi.
While I was waiting for the cab I checked out Murenos and it is quite lovely with nice rooms, water features and all new equipment. We definitely will go there the next time we come to Bali.
Jackie finally got her hair crème bath, got her nails repolished (they had been cleared at the hospital) and I got a massage. Of course now we were running late.
Got back to Nusa Dua Beach Hotel and had a very nice dinner at Chess. The food was great but it was windy off the ocean and my wife found out you don't want to go from a hair crème bath to a wind blown table. Her hair ended up being everywhere. The final stop was BIMC to get a shot to prevent clots from forming while we were in transit to the US.
Here's what we learned about Bali in a wheel chair. It can be done but you need to check out the logistics. The roads and sidewalks in Bali frequently are broken up and you can be out of luck if you don't scout out your path first.
There appears to be a language or cultural barrier. Our couple of steps at diMare and being assured the hair crème was done on the first floor at Murano were both examples of problems we ran into. But the Balinese people are very kind and considerate and were very helpful when they saw Jackie in a wheelchair.