While happily jogging in the park near home, I took a spill and earned myself a nasty scrape on the front of my right calf. My hand was also cut, and there were small rocks and other unsightly things embedded into my skin. It was plain ugly.
Due to my emotional state at the time and the pain that I had inflicted upon my person (while fighting to stay in the best shape I can despite all the good German bread, chocolate, and pork sausage having been consumed), I cried all the way home. Typically, because they mind their own business, none of the few Germans that passed me on the street stopped to help or ask the reason for my suffering. Ein Polizist drove by, and I hoped that perhaps he as a protector of the community might be curious about my pain and tears, and maybe even drive me the rest of the way home in his car, or to the hospital, if he deemed my injury serious enough. Boy, wouldn't that make for a good story?
Did he stop? Nein! This made me cry even harder, because tender, loving care was in urgent order!
As I stumbled over the threshold into my home, the response to my trauma only slightly better than that given me by the policeman. Therefore I was forced to treat my own injuries. Having brought two bottles of my own hydrogen peroxide from the States, I poured some of the precious liquid over my dirty hand and leg, watching the wounds bubble and foam. In Germany, Wasserstoff Peroxide is expensive (about 5 euros for a 100-ml bottle) and only available in pharmacies. Having worked in a doctor's office, I learned that hydrogen peroxide can be used to to clean, dissolve blood spatters and stains, and perform other minor miracles.
On a Sunday morning five days later, the wound itself was healing, but there was another problem: the skin below my ankle was red, warm and painful, as if there was an infection underneath. It was obvious I should go to the doctor. I was transported sofort by Heinie to the local Krankenhaus, which is more like a walk-in clinic and not like any hospitals I'd ever been to. There were no loud ambulances pulling in; there were no uniformed men in green pushing stretchers; there were no white-robed nurses or doctors rushing from room to room, stethoscopes around their necks. In fact, no one else in the whole town appeared to be having any kind of medical emergency -- at least not there -- because I was the only one waiting in the sanitary corridor (singular).
After I walked in, a Frau behind the glass at the entrance signaled to another person who was concealed behind closed doors. The second woman came out and took my insurance card, asking who my Hausarzt was. Because I didn't understand what that meant, I deferred to my German translator/driver to answer. He told her the name of my family doctor.
One great thing about Germany is that with your health insurance card, you pay nothing. When I first arrived in the country, there was a 10-euro copay, but that requirement was eradicated in recent months. When you hand over your insurance card, the German computers automatically know where you live, and a small form prints out for the doctors to write on.
While we waited in the corridor, Sunday morning mass was going on in the hospital chapel, located just a few steps away. The pipe or electronic organ must have been right by the door where we sat, because I could hear it clearly. Within short minutes, we were ushered into the office of the doctor on duty, Dr. Wurst. Surprisingly, he was the only one there, situated at a small desk in a very large examining room. It was strange. No one took my blood pressure or weighed me. My body temperature was not a concern for the Germans either. There was no examining table, no medical assistant, no nurse -- nichts.
Dr Wurst?
I sat down in a chair by his desk and held up my injured leg with my hands. Dr. Wurst, who also spoke some English, looked at my wound, made the proper recommendations, treated it with some cold liquid squirted onto a bandage, and wrote out an antibiotic prescription to take to the nearest open pharmacy. We would have to drive several kilometers, because on Sundays in Germany, most businesses are closed, and pharmacies take turns opening.
The doctor was a courteous, intelligent and informative man. He answered my questions regarding emergency health care in Germany, giving interesting responses.
He told me that in most of Europe there are emergency doctors that travel to the scenes of accidents, fires, etc. In Germany, such a doctor is called a Notarzt. That doctor has everything he needs to stabilize a patient at the scene of the accident. Notärzte are just as prevalent as firemen and EMTs in our country, driving orange and white emergency vehicles with sirens and flashing lights. These doctors' jobs are to sit and wait to be called out, like paramedics in the USA, and they handle between 5 to 15 accidents/calls per shift.
In America, there are greater distances between injury victims and the hospital. Emergency personnel are trained to prep patients for travel, getting them on the road to the hospital as soon as possible. In Europe, emergency doctors treat victims right at the scene, helping them until they are stable enough to travel, then they may go to a hospital nearby.
Because of this difference, emergency room doctors do not exist, as a specialty, at least not in the smaller hospitals such as the one I visited. Dr. Wurst was the only one in the hospital, and he is a doctor from a practice of 15 others that work in the city I lived in and a neighboring city. In a city of 30,000 or less people, one doctor is always on duty in a hospital, so a city with more than 30,000 will have two doctors available, and so on.
I was grateful for my education from Dr. Wurst, He sent me on my way knowing much more about emergency medicine in Germany, but gave me the standard advice about visiting my Hausarzt for follow-up.
Wörterbuch / Dictionary
die Frau - woman
der Hausarzt - family physician
das Krankenhaus - hospital
nichts - nothing
der Notarzt - emergency physician (plural - Notärzte)
das Polizist - policeman
das Wasserstoff Peroxide - hydrogen peroxide
die Wurst - sausage
