Hospital, what Pain Meds?

As luck, luck -- really? -- would have it, our first week included a doctor visit on Friday and a drive to the local hospital on Sunday.

The lessons learned from this series of events can be summarized as follows.

It helps to have health insurance.

Which we did. In a country without HMOs, without network or out-of-network doctors, you pick a local general practitioner, trundle over there, make a co-pay of 10 Euros and get to see the doc.
The co-pay, a joke by American standards, is good for three months and also covers all referrals. What's more, the German government just last week decided to drop the co-pay because the insurers are sitting on a pile of cash.

Not all doctors are created equal.

People are people. Simple as that. Our newly found doctor needed no more than a couple of minutes and a few judicious probing pokes to diagnose a "skeletal problem". Four weeks later, a CT scan proved the man right.

Ibuprofen instead of Opiates.

What does not kill you, makes you more cynical. Searing back pain but no opiates. They really tread very lightly here when it comes to prescribing opiates. In the doctor's own words "not like in the U.S. where they hand it out like candy."
Whatever your opinion on treatment of severe pain may be, that pile of cash may, to a small extent, have to do with prescription practice.

We did end up going to the hospital a couple of days later, as the doctor had advised in case the pain should become worse.


That language barrier again.

The one week hospital stay was not so great. The food was excellent, but that does not help if you cannot eat it due to intolerance of their pain medication. Indeed, nothing stronger that something called Novalgin. With the unfortunate side effect to make some people throw up whatever calories they try to ingest. The staff in that department were friendly but some were foreign born too. The concept of English as the world's one uniting language was tested under potential live-altering circumstances -- and failed.
Once out, the local doctor continued treatment, and all worked out in the end.

As we will explain later, there is one indicator that you have been to a hospital way too often recently.

That indicator is that you can walk into any ward at 1 in the morning, borrow a cold pack, and they just ask you to be so nice and bring it back.