I suppose my friend meant well when he told me I "must be so terrified, far from home, unable to speak the language, worried about the quality of care" as I lay with my leg elevated under a saddle bag of ice on my hotel bed in Portillo.
Outside, smiling happy folk were schussing the powder slopes of Chile's premiere ski resort, the same powder that felled me two hours earlier and had me now relying on crutches and scrambling for my travel insurance number.
Truth was, I hadn't thought of any of the challenges my friend was now presenting to me.
I can't speak Spanish - unless you count "agua con gas" - but my Don Juan of a Chilean doctor spoke the universal language of love, flirting his way through examinations of what would turn out to be a broken tibial plateau and torn medial collateral ligament. "Sex?" he asked when filling out my travel insurance form, running his hands through his luscious grey locks. Before I can say "female" he says "enormous" and it's game on for the 60-year-old doctor who has not lost his charm nor his cheek.
It's no surprise I spent most of my time in his clinic while waiting the three days to fill out my paperwork and get me on a plane. I'm a sucker for a flirt and this Don Juan did it well.
"I am going to poke you with my big fat needle," he would say before draining my ballooned knee of blood.
From any other nationality it would sound like a Benny Hill flick but the Chilean rolling of his tongue and his lisping turned vaudeville into burlesque. When my medical friends on the same ski camp as me kindly pointed out my doctor of love had taken my X-ray upside down, I started to heed the words of my previously well-meaning mate.
Don Juan's advice on painkillers, however, was spot-on.
"You can have them from the box or you can have them at the bar as a Pisco Sour but you cannot have both," he said with a wink as he handed over my prescription.
True to form and choice, he found me and my crutches propping up the bar while my well-meaning pal was dancing his socks off in a dress and a wig with a bunch of equally hilarious ski nutters around me. Altitude does that to you. "I see you chose the painkiller in a glass," he said with a laugh.
I secretly hoped he'd ask me for a tango but obviously the Pisco had clouded my brain and my geography, then I feared he'd ask my friend in a frock instead.
Two days later and I was wheeled onto a plane bound from Santiago to Buenos Aires for a long-haul flight home via Auckland.
The shock of my injury had finally hit me. The four weeks left of my five-week ski trip were now confined to possible surgery and definite rehab.
My specialist back home has no locks, he speaks with a broad Australian accent and his X-ray machine wouldn't dream of taking anything upside down.
As for sex and needles? He thinks they belong in Kings Cross. Sigh.
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