Once the ambulance arrived and took John away we were left “blind”. John was not in a fit state to have his mobile phone and he had been given him a sedative when they put him in the ambulance as he had become agitated. The last thing our friend saw was the ambulance driving away with John in the back of it, supposedly on their way to Manacor hospital.

We waited anxiously for a couple of hours and then decided to call the hosptial. John had not been admitted to that hosptial. Again panic takes hold. Where is he? How do we find him when we are not even in the country? I called a close friend who had lived in Mallorca for years and asked if she could help. She told me that she would find him for me! An hour later and she called back. She had spoken to Manacor and Palma hospitals but they did not have him so she called the ambulance service to ask where they had taken him. Eventually she found out that he was in Palma Planas, a private hospital in Palma. We couldn’t find him as he had been taken out of the state system and put into the private one. Now it was a waiting game again as the Intensive Care department did not take telephone calls. We had to wait for them to call us to give us an update on his condition. They had promised to call the next day and it was definitely a case of “no news is good news” as they would only call earlier if there was a medical emergency!

So I waited, all night with hardly any sleep and most of the next day. I didn’t know how serious his condition was and if I needed to try to get an earlier flight. He could be sitting up in bed a bit sore and tired but ok or he could be very poorly. We just didn’t know. At this point we still though that he had just had very low blood sugar.

Eventually the phone call came. I remember hearing the words “he has had a stroke” and not much else from that call. All I knew was that he was sedated, intubated and stable.