Usually, when I tell people that I underwent emergency surgey in Sri Lanka, they look horrified. I may as well have said that I'd wrestled a 12-foot croc, or perhaps signed up for military training with Al Qaeda or something.

Well, not only did I survive my Third World surgery - I was, and I remain, extremely grateful for it.

My accident happened near the town of Kurunegala, only about 30 kms from our morning starting point of Kandy. The congested traffic and the poor condition of the road severely hindered our progress. Hence, including a quick stop for petrol and some fresh bread, those 30 kms took us over an hour to traverse.

Some short time before my accident, I saw a dog get run over by a bus. This really shook me, and in retrospect I wish I had stopped for some water and a break at that point. (To digress momentarily - I love dogs, and I find witnessing the pitiful situation that dogs find themselves in, to be one of the most distressing things about travelling in the Third World. After spending only a few days in Russia once, I was plagued for months afterwards by a recurring nightmare in which I dreamt that I had lost my poor dog there. Over-sensitive? Probably - but what's the cure?).

I pushed on, feeling very sad, frustrated, and impatient. We reached yet more roadworks, where piles of gravel spilt into the road from its edges. I pulled out to overtake a slow truck, as I had done many dozens of times before in Sri Lanka. But when I got to the outside edge of the truck, I saw another truck which was coming towards me swerve around something on his inside, thereby manoeuvring into a collision course with me. I pulled back in, and the next thought that went through my head was "FUUUUUUUUUUCK" as I very clearly saw my knee burst open on the asphalt, as if in slow motion.

I believe that I lost traction by swerving onto the gravel, causing the bike to fall on its right side. I can blame nobody but myself for this outcome, which is somewhat frustrating, because I have no idea whether I'd do any better if I was placed under the same set of circumstances again. What I can say for sure is that I am still happy not to have collided head-on with a truck!

If there is a lesson to be learned, I believe it is that frustration and motorbikes don't mix. If you can't be patient in snail's-pace traffic, or you can't be calm about watching dogs get run over, then get off the bike until you recover your equanimity.

When I stopped tumbling, I picked myelf up off the road and walked the few metres back to my bike. I was absolutely determined not to look at my knee again, unless and until that became absolutely necessary. I made a token effort to pick the bike up, then thought "Fuck it" - there were plenty of people around, and I knew they'd be clambering to help me soon enough, so I walked off to the side of the road, and stood waiting for Lang, who I hoped would find me sooner rather than later.

It is a source of pride and amusement for me that I got up and walked as far as I did with no assistance, considering that I had just destroyed the extensor mechanism in my right leg. Of course, I didn't find out until some time later that, on top of peeling the skin off my knee-cap, I had partially crushed my patella, and suffered an avulsion of the tendon, with an associated avulsion fracture (this means that the tendon was pulled off my knee-cap, bringing a chunk of bone with it).

I gather that I was in some kind of merciful shock - I was thinking quite clearly, and felt reasonably calm, even though I had a very good idea of how serious my injury was. Crying was right at the bottom of my list of priorities, and I do not remember feeling any pain, except where I had superficially grazed my right arm. My mind went to the first aid kit we were carrying, and my heart sank as I remembered the size of the bandages, which now seemed pitifully inadequate in relation to my wound. I assumed that we would have to go to the small dispensary that was inevitably located in the main street of every village for first aid, and then hire a car to drive me to a hospital, where ever that might be.

It was barely a minute before Lang reached me. Apparently he had seen the tail-end of my fall in his side mirror. He looked worried, but was clearly hopeful that I was fine.
"Are you OK?" he asked.
All I could do was shake my head.
"Where are you hurt?" he continued, his worry quickly turning into alarm.
"Knee" I said, and before I could warn him not to, he looked. He started voicing my concern.
"Oh God, Sam, what are we going to do?"

By some mircale, Lang's question was answered by an enthusiastic tuk-tuk driver who broke the good news to us:
"There's a hospital nearby! Come with me!"

During our short trip to the hospital, that tuk-tuk driver's face was burned into my memory as he turned around every hundred metres or so to take another fascinated look at my gory knee. When we arrived at the hospital, he refused payment for his invaluable services.

We were met at the entrance of Kurunegala Teaching Hospital by efficient staff wheeling a gurney, onto which they expertly shuffled me. I was whisked inside, and placed under the care of experts, at which stage I relaxed, and started to cry.

Over the course of my stay in Kurunegala T.H., many, many people asked me "Why are you crying?" in a manner and tone of voice that suggested they really couldn't comprehend my tears. Soon, I began to wonder if there was some kind of taboo attached to crying in Sri Lanka. Or perhaps Sri Lankans are so used to the horrific injuries inflicted by 20 years of civil war that they were genuinely baffled by my disproportionate level of distress.

One of the questions that I've been asked most frequently since my accident is how fast I was travelling at the time. I have no way of knowing exactly, but my estimate is somewhere in the vicinity of 40 to 50 kms/hr.

To my annoyance, a Cathay Pacific pilot who asked me the speed question seemed incredulous at my answer.
"That's a lot of damage for such a low-speed accident" said he.
I suppose I should make allowances for the fact that 747 pilots routinely travel around at 900 kms/hr, so to him 50 kms/hr might be imperceptibly slow. Nevertheless, I'd love to see this (incidentally Australian) pilot hit the asphalt at 13.9 metres/second and tell me it doesn't hurt!

I received a more gratifying response when I told one of my physiotherapists how fast I'd been going when I stacked. She looked really impressed, and proceeded to tell me about some of her male friends who did an experiment one day. The experiment involved leaping from a moving car at increasingly high speed, in order to gauge how fast they could hit the ground without hurting themselves. She told me that they only got up to 20kms/hr before they abandoned the experiment as a bad idea.

Anyway, back to Kurunegala Teaching Hospital.

An hour or so after my arrival at the hospital, as I was being wheeled out of x-ray, still flat on my back, a man's face appeared above me.
"Remember me?" he asked.
Lang looked at the man enquiringly, but I would have recognized that face anywhere.
"You're the tuk-tuk driver!" I said.
"Yes" replied my chivalrous rescuer, grinning, as he handed Lang the torn end of an airmail envelope, on which was hand-written his name and address, with the touching note "Send the letter my friend".

Mr Liyanage then promptly disappeared into the veritable crowd of curious onlookers who lined the hospital corridor. Meanwhile, I was beginning to feel like a minor celebrity. All ailments, injuries, and sick relatives were momentarily forgotten while I - extraordinary white woman - was wheeled past.

Unfortunately, the fresh bread I'd partaken of for breakfast an hour before the accident won me a six hour wait before I could have my surgery. In the meantime, I tried to convince one of the doctors that I only needed a local anaesthetic. He laughed indulgently at my suggestion, and asked if I was wanting to supervise the surgery. In any case, he assured me that a local anaesthetic was out of the question.

My six-hour wait passed remarkably quickly, as I whiled away the time watching the ubiquitous fan rotating hypnotically on the high ceiling. A motherly, grinning young nurse visited me at regular intervals to pat my hand. She kept me up to date on my progress in the surgical queue, and informed me of sundry details, such as which ward I would be placed in after my operation. My very own guardian angel!

Finally, the orderlies came to wheel me to theatre. Finally, the fear set in. Every horror story I'd ever heard about surgical and anaesthetic mishaps sprang to my mind. What a place to experience one's first general anaesthetic!

I was parked on my trolley outside the (lone) operating theatre, literally shoulder to shoulder with the other pre-op patients - all men - most of whom were partially encased in thick, bloody bandages. I engaged in small-talk with the man on my right.
"Hello" (with a smile)
"Hello" (returned with a smile)
"What happened to you?"
"Bike accident ... What happened to you?"
"Bike accident" (shared chuckle).

My celebrity-status continued behind the scenes - not a doctor, nurse, or student passed me by without taking a sticky-beak at the notes resting on my shins. Most of them asked me where I was from, and more than one told me stories of relatives in Australia. One nurse had an aunt living in Parramatta (my home town). Another sent her 10 year-old son in to have some impromptu English language practice with me. I had to smile (or grimace?) when he asked me, ever so politely, how I was. I felt very much like teaching him a few choice expletives to describe my predicament. Meanwhile, I had ample time to notice the green gumboots worn by each of the surgeons as they trooped in and out of theatre - they were all covered in blood.

Finally my time was up. I was wheeled into the operating theatre where I discovered that this was a multi-patient O.R. I barely had time to register the presence of a camphorous vapour in my mouth before I woke up, alone, in a deserted corridor somewhere.

Little did I know that the wosrt pain I have experienced during this entire episode awaited me, literally around the corner. I was wheeled to my ward by a non-English-speaking porter who conveyed via sign language that I was to transfer onto a particular bed. I was groggy, disoriented, in pain, and I had no-one to help me. I doubted that I could make it onto the bed. We held two brief, separate conversations - one in English, one in Sinhala. Soon enough, the porter decided to "help" me by pulling, hard, on the ankle of my freshly-repaired leg. I screamed and I hollered, and I couldn't have cared less about my fellow-patients, or the growing audience of visitors. Pain, like I could hardly believe! But it got better from that point (if not much).

My most enduring memory of Kurunegala Teaching Hospital? The lack of walls on my ward. The walls - such as they were - consisted of concrete, well over a foot deep - but they stopped barely a metre above the ground. There was nothing fancy like glass or louvres filling the empty space - just air, opening onto a mini jungle of palms and banana trees. There were no mosquitos, no flies. Just clean, cool air. Lovely.