First Hospital stay

Fernando had his hernia operation last Friday, making for a real German experience—the hospital stay! The good news is that the operation went well and Fernando is at "home" again. All of the doctors and nurses who have spoken with him and looked at his incisions (two plus a …gulp… little hole, above his stomach, where the camera tube went) say his recovery is marching along as well as expected. Unfortunately, it is slow and Fernando is still not the most mobile he has ever been, and prefers to be prone whenever possible. He is hoping to get back to work either late this week or next week. Although you will be filled in on his foreign-country-surgery-experience when he’s feeling a bit better, in the meantime, I can tell you what it all seemed like as a visitor.

But any heavy talk about hospitals and incisions needs some levity to balance it out. Well, let’s start with the German word for hospital… It’s one of those words you learn early on because many of the tram stops are named for the big neighborhood hospital. Krankenhaus! Literally, a house for the sick, but what’s so funny is how kranken resembles our word "cranky". There are connections, sure. Leo, for one, is always at his crankiest the night before waking up sick as a dog. So, Fernando spent 4 days in the cranky house. Indeed, he was cranky about the surgery before going in… annoyed at being hospitalized so soon after starting his job, irritated that he was expected to stay for as long as five days, nervous that some renegade surgeon would do a hack job on his internal organs, and dubious that he would understand anything or be understood. Thankfully, all this crankiness prevented any of the above from occurring.

Because Germans leave nothing to chance, Fernando was told to arrive at the hospital by 10 am on Thursday for his Friday operation. This way, the doctors and nurses had 24 hours to evaluate his general health before picking up the scalpel. What really happened on Thursday was that Fernando checked in and spent the day sitting around reading, watching TV, eating, receiving calls asking about how the operation went, and receiving a visit from his wife and child. Over the phone that first day, Fernando sounded relaxed and almost amused, and described the place feeling like a prep school. As Fernando grew up in Chile and was not educated at one of these institutions, I was curious to see what "prep school" looked like to him. Well, it really did look like one! The whole compound was walled-in and gated. Rather than one big high-rise, the hospital was organized in about 10 or 15 three or four story red brick buildings connected by walking paths. Instead of a mammoth parking lot, there were smallish quads of green lawn and bushy trees, with leaves starting to change color. The only difference, from the outside, was that instead of pairs of people tossing around a lacrosse ball, there were orderlies wheeling patients on cots or wheelchairs from building to building. It was very homey and accessible- so much so that Leo and I waltzed right into Fernando’s room without even checking in or asking permission. Really, so much about that pre-surgery day was like the first day of prep school. We got to meet Fernando’s nice roommate, Werner, who was under observation after a bad fall, and check out all of his things- the closet, the bathroom, the bed, etc.

It was good to see Fernando less nervous. Seeing the doctor on call and the nurses interact with him in such a friendly manner was also a relief. They were attentive and did their best to be understood in their not fluent English. One of them, after dropping off Fernando’s dinner tray, called our attention to a pile of cloth she had put on a shelf-- Fernando’s operation outfit. The best part for sure was the white mesh underwear. I couldn’t help but comment, "Sexy!", and she laughed, which put me at ease. Then Leo and I left, and the next day was the surgery, which, come to think of it, nobody but the medical staff can really talk about, since Fernando was out cold for three hours…