By mid afternoon we’d finally met Andres, hooking up at the BMW dealer who was looking at the bikes for us. Cooley pitching up on his new gold K1200LT made the right impression. 20 minutes later and with introductions finished and our thousend’sth thank you given we’d popped round the corner and were enjoying sushi and cold white wine as Andres guests…now we knew we liked this guy but…mmm, couldn’t for the life of us think why?. The contrast from the last few weeks couldn’t have been starker if we’d tried. We savoured every delicate taste and held each mouthful of delicious cold wine in our mouths for as long as we thought polite. This was fantastic. All we could do was profusely thank Andres, we simply didn’t have the articulation to get across exactly how marvelous this was.

By the end of our meal we’d had our initial impression of Andres confirmed, simply a great guy, passionate about bikes and enthusiastic to help. With his enthusiasm we could have talked for hours, however he had a job to get back to and I needed a hospital. With my neck situation explained Andres directed us to one of South America’s finest, The Albert Einstein.

By mid afternoon we’d survived the taxi ride and were passing through the large automatic glass doors of the Albert Einstein Emergeny reception. Sounds posh doesn’t it? I mean c’mon, we have an Emergency room and these guys have an ‘Emergency Reception’. It looked as fancy as it sounds and 30minutes later we were explaining my symptoms and subsequent problems with a young doctor and thankful for his fluent English.

We now had three white clad doctors in the examining room, their lips thoughtfully persed, mouths slightly askew, parousing carefully my shiny new X-ray’s. The occasional frowned glance passed my way wasn’t making me feel any better. After I’d been asked how long ago my accident happened and answered for the 10th or 15th time, 23 days ago in Amazonia, I knew that I’d done more than just badly sprained something.

A ‘C.T.’ scan followed the X-rays, which in turn was followed by a visit to the large ‘polo’ (for our American friends that ‘lifesavers’) the ‘MRI’ scan. God I hope the insurance covers this, I thought? I could see the $ signs mounting up.

3 hours later and as a precautionary measure I was now sporting my new ‘rather sexy’ neck brace and sitting like a stuffed dodo, with Lisa in one of the consulting rooms. Admittedly by now I was getting a little anxious. Our young doctor friend entered the room and sat legs crossed on the bed. I have no idea what I was expecting to hear, but I can tell you what I wasn’t expecting…”Mr. Thomas, I have some bad news for you”, he paused “we have checked your scan results and I’m afraid you have broken your neck, you are very lucky to be here”. Yeah, right, where’s the candid camera I thought. Nope this was for real. I remember thinking not, what does this mean for my health but, bloody hell I hope this doesn’t mean we have to fly home and end our journey!

Lisa and I simply stared at oneanother in dissabelief. This wasn’t sinking in. It wasn’t going to for a few more hours yet until it did. Our doctor carefully explained what had happed, where the cervical brake had taken place and if that wasn’t enough, casually dropped into conversation that I’d dislocated the vertebrae as well and that 1.5mm further would have seen me as a paraplegic. “You are very lucky”! I was to hear this very same phrase many many more times before the night was out.

We nervously asked about the need to fly home. A few minutes later and we’d been left in no doubt that flying home was out of the question as immediate surgery was required before anything else was done.

The decision’not’ to admit me instantly was only because I winged like a big girl, about how much I hate hospitals and that my doctor wanted their neuro surgeon to take over my case and he was flying back from korea today. I also promised to stay in bed and remain as still as possible. I figured I’d lasted 23 days with a broken neck I could manage I more day.

We made our way into hospital, and despite Simon being very jovial with all the nurses and his surgeons I could tell that he was nervous of his op tomorrow. It just didn’t seem real as to me a broken neck was ChristopherReeve……On both of our minds was also the possibility of having to finish our trip……I know this sounds trivial as Simon was able to walk and was not paraplegic…however, this would be awful for us to consider.

They were going to open his neck from the anterior ie enter from the throat (aaggh) …and shove everything to one side so they could get access to the vertebrae where they would need to first clear and remove shattered bone fragments that had been compressing the nerves, hence the pain and discomfort in his left hand side. Then they would remove the disc between C6 and C7 and insert a titanium cage overwhich they would place a titanium plate which would join C6 and C7 together, fusing them and stableising the whole area. Phew! What with his titanium bits in his leg (from a previous motorcycle accident) and now his neck he’s worth quite a bit!

I made my way into hospital and headed for the ICU. He had only just come out of surgery and was not yet fully conscious. The first thing he said was ‘my throat hurts…!’ Err….duhhh....yes I think it must.

After being kicked out of ICU – the visiting times are short – I made my way back to the hotel by 10pm and started to load the trolley so I could move all the bags, helmets, boots, and motorcycle kit to our new hotel. I’d managed to sort out with the insurance company a new hotel as the Formula 1 was good but not to stay at for a while. This new one was The Parthenon in Vila Olimpia Sao Paulo and had a small kitchenette so we won’t have to pay a fortune eating out all the time.

I finished moving into the new place by 1:00pm and was exhausted. I’d been feeling ‘off’ for a little while now, having had a headache everyday for the last few weeks but today during my time with Simon in ICU I felt sick and almost fainted – hadn’t told Simon of course. Just overtired I think.

The rest of the day was me just waiting for him to return to the room and then keeping him company.

After spending another few days in the Albert Einstein I was released with a colourful assortment of pain killers and anti-inflamatories and strict instructions to wear the padded neck brace 24-7 for the next few weeks.

Post surgery I felt pretty good considering. The oddest part was the different timbre to my voice, caused, I’m told by the moving around of the voice box during surgery. It should return to normal over the next few months, ah well, we’ll see?

OK, so why I am I alone? Lisa’s been feeling steadily worse over the last 7 days and naively we’d put it down to a variety of reasons, fatigue, dehydration, the trials in Amazonia. On my release day from hospital she had fainted and had to go down to the emergency room – ending up with loads of blood tests and being diagnosed with a bladder infection…..which we now know was an incorrect diagnosis!!! Last night she scared the hell out of me. I’d been bathing her down with cold towels all night but had been unable to bring her tempetaure down. In the mean time she was shivering violently and feeling cold. Her lips and extremities turning bright blue was the last straw…it was time to get her to a hospital and so with my neck brace firmly in place and a taxi called we set off for Albert Einstein…again!!!. 5 hours later the clock turned 1:30am and Lisa’s test had come back positive for Malaria. She was admitted immediately. The intravenous drip she’d been on for the last 4 hours had at least eased her temperature.

I managed to get back to the hotel room by 2:30am and with my brian ticking over and my neck feeling uncomftable I thought I might as well get a little dairy done.

Just had confirmation that Motorcycle Sport & Liesure (mag’ in the UK) want another article and so do ‘Mens Health’ in South Africa….thats good news as that’ll be another few quid for the travel fund.

I can’t believe just how bad I’ve felt over the last few weeks. I ignored the first feeling of illness…you know you think it’ll just ‘go away’…but as Simon was in hospital I had become steadily worse. But worse of all was the mis-diagnosis…..I convinced myself after that first diagnosis that in just a few more days I’d feel fine….of course I didn’t. So, because the malaria diagnosis was delayed my symptoms were bad….makes me ill just to think about how I felt! Whatever you do take precautions against malaria (we do but I had been ill whilst in the Amazon) because you DO NOT want to suffer the end result. Over the last few weeks I’ve lost 13kg….all due to the malaria.

So what have we been up too?

Well after my accident we had a running battle with our insurer ‘AXA’, who as far as I’m concerned behaved appaulingly. Here’s the short version of events. We had no problem with the actual claim and as you’d hope AXA, who we’ve been isured with for 2 ½ years covered my hospitalisation and all treatment. The problem we had was this; post surgery AXA demanded that I be repatriated, which is their right according to our contract but as far as we can read this is pre- treatment. Makes sense, if it’s cheaper for AXA to get me treated in the UK then they’d want to fly me back and take advantage. The problem was my condition made it imposible for me to fly and so the surgery had to happen in Brazil, the crazy part was that post surgery they still wanted to fly me back even though there was absolutely no medical reason to. Post surgery there was no lengthy bout of physio to pay for and as far as my specialist are concerned no other treatment neccersay and therefore no additional cost to carry by AXA, they are at no additionl risk!!! So why demand on flying me back. In the small print of the contract it states that my/our insurance cover terminates the moment we set foot back on UK soil. They gave us an ultimatum: fly back or we will cancel your insurance 7 days after your Doctor deems you fit to fly. (in other words, they just wanted to cancel the insrnace)…….

We were fully expecting AXA to re-wrtie the terms of the insurance, stating that any future claim arisng from my neck would not be covered, hey no travel insurance covers you for ‘pre-exisitng medical conditions’, but we’re disappointed…’no sorry’…pissed off that AXA are cancelling our insurance and to add insult to injury, literally, are also not returning my premium which is paid up unitll July 2006. This is crazy.

There is no medical reason to repatriate.
There is no financial reason to repatriate as there is no other additional cost to cover post surgery.
AXA are at ‘absolutley no additional risk’ insuring me if they simply add a clause stating future claims arisng from this injury aren’t covered.

OK,