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Things Don't Always Go As Planned

Guten Abend!

This has been one of the worst days of my life. Pat is in the hospital here in Germany. They've got him in the stroke unit. It doesn't appear to be severe, but they want to observe him for at least 3 days. More than that, I don't know.

If you read up on culture shock, they say there are 4 or 5 stages. The first stage is the honeymoon stage. Everything is new and fun and exciting. Then comes the frustration stage, followed by the adjustment stage, and so on. I'm currently in the frustration stage, and today only served to accent it. They took him to one hospital, and they determined it was neurological, so they sent him to specialists at another hospital. At the first hospital they gave me a map with a rectangle on it that said the name of the hospital. It was within walking distance, so I set out. Only the one rectangle turned out to be a whole complex of buildings, with not very good signage (which I could have read, even in German). When they took him away in the ambulance, they didn't get my phone number and I had Pat's phone. There was no way to find out where they took him. I spent at least 3 hours sitting in the wrong building. 

Being Sunday, they had minimal staff. Turns out it was a neurological rehab building. The hospital was a little distance away. After church one of our priests came and anointed him and helped me navigate the German I was too stressed to use (as well as helping me find the right building). Later I went back to the monastery with him and had some wine and tea and dinner, and left feeling a lot less stressed. The frustration comes with not knowing the language well enough to handle this level of emergency, or how everything works. In our own culture, we take so much for granted. We know just what to do and how to act. This has been an education for me, and I believe I am not the same person I was before.  

Will we have to leave Germany? I hope not. Our insurance will pay for most of it, and I can still take the language course, even if Pat can't (we're not sure), so our visa will still be valid. It will be easier to stay here than in our dry, off-the-grid, frozen cabin in Alaska for sure.

I'm tired, so Good Night!

 

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