das Krankenhaus

By all objective standards, my experience at Krankenhaus Nosdstadt was good and exceeded my expectations (see previous post by Julia). The place was scrupulously clean, the food was better than decent, and the level of care that I received was outstanding. The nurses were all very nice, helpful and competent. The doctors spent as much time with me as I wanted. In general, I felt that I was being cared for. First things first, though: having surgery sucks and I will do anything in my power to prevent being operated on again. But, really, if one is willing to make lemonade out of lemons, a hospital stay in a new country may just be an alright way to learn lots about another culture, and about oneself.

Surrender
The operation itself was not a concern. After all, this was a standard hernia operation to be performed in Germany, a developed country. My concerns, or crankiness as Julia puts it, were about all the peripheral things that were sure to be unpleasant. Things like a chatty roommate with horribly stinky feet, or not getting enough food. Even though Thursday was a beautiful morning, and the sun made it all nice and toasty inside the tram, I was one cranky patient on my way to the Krankenhaus. Maybe Julia was right, if I just went with the flow...things might be more bearable. It worked! Once I got to the hospital, I tried this new attitude. It was just fine to wait an hour in a hallway before being acknowledged; it was alright to wait another three hours for an entirely pointless conversation with the anesthetics expert, who was supposed to inform me of my “options” but instead just pointed to the X where I should sign. It turned out I signed up for a “tubular anesthesia” according to a translation I saw afterwards. And it was hunky dory to spend the rest of the day at the hospital and one extra night sleeping on a cot for no other reason than Germanic über-kaution. I waved the white flag, I gave in, I surrendered. Life was much easier after this decision.

Cut others some slack
My roommate, Werner, stroke me as odd the minute I saw him. He reminded me of Rod Stewart. Maybe it was his white, long and flowing hair, but I could easily imagine him in purple tights singing “Forever Young”. We introduced ourselves and quickly ran out of things to say. His English was just as bad as my German. But this didn’t prevent him from talking to me, or talking to himself, pretty much all the time. Sometimes he would point to my food tray, point to his own, and utter something like “bah”. Then he would open his newspaper and talk to himself. The nurses (or “sisters”, as they’re called here) didn’t quite get him either. Every time a nurse came to see him he would say something that would clearly put her off. Maybe a crass joke, or some quirky remark, but the communication that I witnessed wasn’t very fluent. By a combination of signs, grunts, and present-tense-only half-sentences, he understood that I was there for a hernia. I think the sign for hernia is universal: you make a small cup with your hand, bring it to the affected area, and make a “what a bummer” gesture and everyone will get it. And I understood that he was there for observation, after taking a nasty fall and landing on his head. He had, as he attempted to explain to me, “peanuts” in the brain, referring to the size of the blood clots that showed up on his ct scans. Werner’s girlfriend, Gina, came to visit every afternoon, for six hours at a time. Though they were pushing fifty, they were like teenagers and this was, for some reason, quite endearing to me. She would sit on his lap, then laugh and kiss him repeatedly. He would tease her about something and she would play being offended, walk away and come back after a while (later I figured out that she went out to smoke). Sometimes they would get all sad and hug forever, while whispering stuff in each other’s ears. The TV was on, thank God, and I pretended to be busy reading, to give them whatever amount of privacy I could in my condition. As odd as Werner seemed, he was a nice guy. When I came to after surgery, he asked me how I was doing, then pointed to my side table. There was a compact, beautiful flower arrangement from him and Gina. When dinner arrived that night, he offered me half of his. I gladly accepted, as I had not eaten all day. Werner was considerate, too. He didn’t stay up too late, checked with me whenever he changed TV channels, and would always turn down the volume if I talked on the phone. He would cheer every time I got up to the bathroom and made it safely to my cot on my own. I wish he had been my roommate in college.
Our last lunch together was memorable. The rooms have access to a wide wrap­-around porch with tables and chairs. Luck had it that our room was in the south end, which meant that we were the only ones that got sun. We brought the food trays outside (I even brought the flowers) and had something close to a conversation about family, work, travel, football, Formula 1 Racing, and the weather. The food was great and the sun warm. It was almost like a vacation. When I said good-bye to Werner, I gave him my email address, and asked him “haben Sie email?” His answer was complicated, something to do with Gina. Oh well, I thought, we will always have Krankenhaus Nordstadt.

Ibuprofen rocks
The doctor that officially told me I had a hernia back in Atlanta (Ben had quickly diagnosed it over the phone the day before) told me that the operation was not that big of a deal. He told me very confidently that guys recover pretty fast, usually in one week. In fact, he added, the procedure is out-patient. The surgery described by the doctors in Germany was the same. One incision under the belly button for a camera tube thing, a second little incision two inches below for a balloon, and a third one closer to the hernia to pull the piece of gut in place and insert a mesh to close the hole. The difference in Germany was the hospital stay: five friggin’ days. Naturally, I thought the Germans were playing it way too safe. Well, let me tell you, I don’t know what that Atlanta doctor was smoking. My belly was very sore and incredibly bloated; I was dizzy and nauseous, and in general felt like crap. Not to mention I had a drainage bag attached to my belly. All of the sudden, five days at the hospital seemed alright. But they sent me home Sunday, the fourth day, with some very mild pain killers. I made an appointment with a doctor the next day, to get a formal “justification” for being absent from work and also to ask for something to knock me down so I could sleep at night. German doctors might be cautious, and this includes a fear of effective painkillers. This last one gave me a prescription for paracetamol, a drug that (for me, anyway) does absolutely nothing. I needed something stronger, so I went to the good old stand by: ibuprofen. Half a dose of a horse pill in the morning, the other half a few hours later and I was a new man.