From Frankfurt to the Doctor's office in 3 easy steps!

It’s been a long time since I’ve written, so I think the best way to go about this is to do this post as summary of the events, with dates in for clarification.

Almost 2 weeks ago, I went to Holland. Since then I haven’t gone on any other long trips. Last Saturday (the  26^th) Kelsey, Ali, Fei, and I went to Frankfurt for the afternoon. It was really nice. The weather was so beautiful, that we didn’t want to go inside, so we just walked around the city, ate a typical wurst for lunch, followed by some Italian ice cream. We did walk into some really pretty churches, as well as the church where the original Unified German State was born (or at least I think that was what it was, if I understood correctly).

We window-shopped for a nice “Deutschland” t-shirt, but all of the tourist-type shirts were in English, so we didn’t buy one. We walked down by the river, and then decided we should take a nap in the sunshine J an hour or so later, we made our way to a place that was supposed to be very well known and popular for it’s Apple wine. We thought we would be good tourists and try some, so we went. Sadly, the service was horrible, and the Apfelwein was pretty gross. But we tried it, and now I know that wine should definitely be made out of grapes, not apples.

That was the last really big adventure until recently.

This weekend was absolutely crazy. I’ve been trying to go somewhere every weekend, since we have free access to the public transportation anywhere in the Rhein valley, but this weekend I on purpose stayed home to prepare for a very scary event: teaching 40 minutes of class in my Theoretical concepts of Foreign language learning class.

Unfortunately, come Saturday, I still had a lot of work to do preparing for it. This was because I helped out with a coffee/tea/cakes/sandwich sale that the Collegium Philippinum put on for a theology symposium in the Alte Uni (the old university). It was a really neat time, because I got to hang out with some of my housemates for about 10 hours when it was all said and done, which I don’t get to do very often. Fei and I worked a lot together, and it was just a fun time where I could feel useful even though my German isn’t perfect. Plus, the more I hang out with Germans, the better my German gets. I definitely wish I could just live with a family instead of taking classes at the University. My free time spent just goofing around with Germans is infinitely more profitable than my courses at the University. Oh well, I guess I have to pull the ol’ wool over the System’s eyes somehow…

Another really neat thing about helping out with the sale is that I got to see the inside of the Alte Universität, which I probably wouldn’t have otherwise, since I don’t have any Theology classes. It is a gorgeous building, which used to be a monastery until Duke Philipp became Protestant and kicked the monks out to start a protestant seminary. Anyway, it’s absolutely gorgeous and old, and I totally understand now why there are so many theology majors here. If went here long term, I would definitely switch to theology just because then I would spend all my time in the beautiful Alte Uni instead of the hideously ugly Humanities building. Seriously, there is no way to describe the difference. I should just take some pictures and post them; that’s the only way to get a really clear understanding…

On Sunday, I played vollyball with a bunch of BCAers and Fei, and then Patrick and I left to go across town to play some pick up Fussball (soccer) with some other exchange students. It was the start of a rather intense adventure, full of peril and injury.

We were a motley crew of students, from all over the place: Britain, Ireland, Finland, Peru, Spain, the USA, and more. I ended up on a team with all Spanish-speakers, which definitely put me a little at a disadvantage as far as knowing what the rest of my team was doing. But with a mix of German, Spanish, and English, we managed ok. Well, except that we stunk. We were getting hammered, partially because we had one less man than the other team, and partially because all of the Spanish guys could play decent offense, but pretty stinky defense, and goalkeeper not at all. Finally, I decided I should see if I could dig up some of my past goal-keeping experience from back in Junior high, and I stepped in to the box as keeper. It actually went a little better from there on out, plus we gained another player, and I was doing a better job at blocking the shots that were getting back to the goal. Then, it happened. One of the players on the other team, an American, ironically enough, got a break-away chance, and somehow made it past the offence into the 18-yard box. It is an important detail that he was American, because he was neither a good soccer player, nor a lithe personality, and made up for his lack of speed and skill by being extremely rough. He attempted to score, and failed. However, in the process of failing, he through his entire mass into my right leg, with me promptly collapsing with the ball in my possession.

At first I thought my leg might be broken, it hurt so bad, but I thought I would give it some time, “walk it off,” like coach always told us to back in the day. The problem with walking it off, is that in order to do that, you have to be able to walk, a skill which I had somehow managed to unlearn during my violent interaction with Uncle Sam’s chunky nephew. After about 20 minutes of trying to “hobble it off,” I decided that it might actually be a better idea to try making my way home, since with a bum leg it was sure to take a long time, and the sun was already getting sleepy. So I bid the boys, chicos, and Jungen fairwell, and began the long limp home.

Marburg on Sunday is dead. No shops are open, and, unfortunately for our wounded protagonist, there are apparently also no buses. At 8pm, after crawling up 139 steps almost on my hands and knees, I arrived back at the Castle. The trip that usually takes me 20 minutes walking took me over an hour to make. At this point, I was absolutely exhausted and in a fair amount of pain, so I crawled up the stairs to my room, and went to sleep, hoping that it was just a big bang injury, and that it would feel better in the morning.

The next morning, I woke up and could barely stand up. That’s when I realized I needed to go to the doctor. After showering using a pilfered broomstick as a crutch, I called the BCA director here in Marburg, to get information about doctors and such. Hanging up the phone, I was armed with information, but not much else. I knew what I needed to do, I just didn’t think I could do it. I needed to find a phonebook (no clue where one of those would be) and look up “Arzt,” the german word for doctor. Next, look at the addresses with a map of Marburg in one hand to find out which was the closest. Then, I needed to call a taxi (in German) and have them take me to the doctor. Then, I needed to find out what was wrong with my leg, and if necessary, go to the hospital.

In all honesty, that would be hard for me to do in the States, in English. I was overwhelmed. I probably would have just tried going back to sleep, in hopes that more sleep would = magical cure, but my leg hurt too much to ignore, so I sat there on my bed, trying to gather my thoughts, and take action. That’s when my roommate woke up.

Just a side note, I would like to nominate David Bethmann for the Nobel Peace Prize. I would also like to thank the entire Collegium Philippinum for just being absolutely amazing.

When Dave heard of my plight, he jumped into action like a New York firefighter. First, he ran next door to Christian, who came over with a pair of crutches that he let me have. This made it possible for me to actually move around semi-independently. Then, Elena, my Romanian neighbor who is studying for her MD, came over and assessed the leg, giving me a little hope in her diagnoses that it almost for sure wasn’t broken. Meanwhile, David was running across the parking lot to the Repetent, Herr Warnemann, who then came up and offered to take me to his personal physician in his car. 20 minutes later, I was on my way, with a bevy of well-wishers waving goodbye.

We arrived at Herr Warnemanns Hausarzt, and I went up to the desk and gave them my handy insurance card, which everyone who comes to Germany to stay for any substantial amount of time gets. I paid my €10 co-pay thingy (which I only have to pay once every 4 months or something, regardless of how many visits I make to the Arzt) and then sat down in the waiting room to, well, wait. Just when I thought I couldn’t wait any more, the lady called my name, and off I hobbled into the maze that is every private practitioner’s office that I’ve ever been in.

No, seriously: why are doctor’s offices so impossibly laid out? Is it so the patients can’t get cold feet and escape? I know I would die of starvation before I every found my way out of that aMAZEing labyrinth.

After waiting some more for the doc, he finally came in, and I began my first ever doctor check up in a foreign language. It was an adventure, to say the least. I managed to convey what had happened, and show him where and how it hurt, and then I think I even understood everything he said.

The result is that I know for sure that the bone isn’t cracked or broken. The reason it hurt so bad is because the muscle had swelled up so much that it pinched the nerve in my leg, giving me a very intense version of the nasty un-comfort you feel after you’ve been driving in a car for about 8 hours. The swelling had also pinched some blood vessels which explained why my foot had been asleep for about 8 hours.

He gave me a prescription for some magical soothing salve—called “pain salve,” ironically enough, and sent me home gimpy, but happy.

Now I am on the mend, and able to limp around with the help of one and sometimes no crutch, and things are looking up. The swelling has gone down a lot, so that my leg doesn’t hurt unless roughly disturbed, though my foot is still asleep. So the next goal is to get the swelling to go down enough that I can be rid of the odd rubber mass that seems to have taken the place of the right side of my right foot. I miss my pinky toe, dang it!

And that is the end of the Saga of my leg and experience with the German healthcare system.

Well, this has become and obscenely long entry, so I’ll leave it at that until later.

This is Gimpy, signing off.