The next day my ankle had swollen to roughly the size of my fist.
After an afternoon of R.I.C.E. (Rest Ice Compression Elevation!) and no improvement, my rightfully concerned parents suggested I call the program director and ask her to take me to the an urgent care facility of some kind. BIG MISTAKE. Sorry parents, usually you do know best, the trip was a profound waste of time. At first I had high hopes, a cheerful male attendant placed me in a wheelchair as soon as we checked in at the front desk, and whisked me up the elevator to the main waiting room. We filled out some paperwork, then waited. And waited. And waited. FIVE HOURS. Not even kidding. The chairs were made of the hardest, most uncomfortable plastic imaginable, and were chained to the floor and each other so I couldn't even re-arrange them to continue with the elevation portion of my R.I.C.E. regimen. And forget about the ice part. They gave me three ice cubes wrapped in a paper towel and didn't look back. The waiting room was full of other patients, some looking like they were teetering on the edge of death by the plague, others looking perfectly healthy, catching up on their gossip with one of Berlin's infamous bikini-filled tabloids, and one women, for whom I felt honestly terrible, shuddering and wailing into her boyfriend's shoulder. FIVE HOURS LATER when the nurse finally called out "Frau Scheltens?" I hobbled into the examination room, where I was met by a nurse who told me I'd definitely need ex-rays, then by a doctor who said they'd be entirely unnecessary, wrapped my ankle in a disposable ace bandage, and handed me a container of pain relieving cream. Since I could barely walk at the time, I found this minimalist solution highly problematic. When I inquired about crutches, the nurse brought in something resembling what I imagined Tiny Tim used in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol I've included a photo below, which I found simply by Google image searching for "European style crutches." Go figure.
I'm not really sure how well my experience can speak to the German healthcare system as a whole, but I have to say I was unimpressed. The wait was terrible, the environment downright prison-like, the care lackluster, and the paperwork tedious and time-consuming. To be fair, one of the nurses put it well in her response to one impatient patient's inquiry as to the nature of his extended wait. As in the U.S., understaffed emergency rooms are increasingly forced to deal with illnesses and injuries that people wait to address until they have reached their absolute worst point, oftentimes in cases where preventative care or early intervention would have solved the problem entirely. What I'm still unclear on is why a phenomenon like this would continue to exist in a country in which the state provides free healthcare for all citizens. Maybe next time I'll think twice before extolling the virtues of European-style healthcare.
