#ok thats enough from me. see you tomorrow morning when I finish my accompanied drawing | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

readfelice-blog · 6 years ago

Text

moominland chronicles fünfzehn: felice vs the german health care system

Hello you,

It’s 4am on Friday morning, I’m lying in bed with one of my 3 flowered ikea lamps burning away, holding my cuddly pig tight to my chest whilst I tap out this blog on my iphone, balanced on a pillow.

I cant sleep.

I’m going to get a taxi to hospital in 5 hours.

Before we start all that please administer any of the below music to yourself as an accompaniment, I’ve been dipping my toes into the clear water of pop shoals this week, I might be the last person to have listened to blond (an article in vice insisted upon me lining it up on my google play - still no cd player, I know):

Frank ocean

Nikes (song, always a fan of a big opener on an album)

https://vimeo.com/179791907?ref=em-share

Blond (album, yes you've probably heard it already)

https://www.discogs.com/Frank-Ocean-Blond/master/1046042

I'm also late on the train for Mitski I’m sure, but the words, restrain in her voice and divergent harmonies (discordant, is that better?) are searing through me, might listen again in the hospital tomorrow.

Though perhaps as she grows older she wont long for that kiss quite as much as she does now, because prince charming will never save her really (though she does acknowledge that from time to time on this album)

Mitski

A horse named cold air (song)

https://youtu.be/ce3m-o1pZqY

Be the cowboy (Album)

https://mitski.bandcamp.com/album/be-the-cowboy

And just this one song, which kind of speaks frankly from my heart a little, or at least I sympathise with, though in a fuller sense my situation is very different and it’s only my little brain that identifies with the lyrics.

SZA: the weekend

https://youtu.be/PALMMqZLAQk

So then.. youre suited and booted musically, lets press on shall we? After all I mentioned hospital, it would be cruel just to taper off now.

Heres my small brain again:

Fuck the fucking german health system, fuck all those uptight bigoted cunts that put the phone down on me this week, fuck my insurance for charging me since july and slyly adding it to my bill, fuck the man at the tk queue yesterday who aggressively shouted at me for talking on the phone with my sister, about my illness, at the first opportunity that day after a very strange experience with the gynaecologist.

Ok,

I’m breathing, my small brain is retracting, lets continue a bit less aggressively now.

Health health health, we’re jumping back on the theme from last week, because sometimes illness doesn't go away, and as this blog is my warts and all document of the weird happenings of my life, I am going to be very very open about whats happening to me this week.

So I’m bleeding, like all pre menopausal women do who dont take contraception that inhibits it, thats what was happening in Paris, thats what has been happening for 3 weeks.

I’ve been bleeding for 3 weeks, yes.

I had really bad period pains last time round, which is unusual for me these days, I took buscopan plus, i soldiered on, then it stopped for a week, then it returned, light some days, heavier seemingly at the weekends. I pigheadedly pushed through physically exhausting weeks of cleaning, travelling, working, I’m a freelance cleaner, I don't get sick pay or holiday pay, I have to work or I can't pay rent.

I wrote a blog about it last weekend. But that was just before the blood clots starting coming, when the first one fell out it plopped in the toilet, I was so shocked I fished it out and curiously studied it (warts and all, I’m sick of skirting the weirdness in my life: its there: get used to it). I thought it was a dead baby, it was monstrous and displayed a horrid kind of plasticity as it eerily shifted round the jar in my hand I was gently coercing. It was an alien, more like rosemary's baby than my cherub cheeked nephew.

That was MONDAY.

I thought, ok the babies fallen out, now it’ll surely stop.

On sunday the bear got in touch, he'd been trying to phone, he was annoyed he couldn't get in contact, he was horny. I told him I was still bleeding, he insisted I go to the doctors, in his very forthright way, he sent me money to go even: because i was clueless about my insurance at that point. I knew i’d been getting letters I couldn't read from tk (die teckniker, german health insurance provider) for months, since I stopped working at the hostel, but I’d just carefully ignored them.

I didn't have the money to pay for health insurance.

I botched my first attempt to see a gynaecologist, I made an appointment online but the transfer the bear made was not in my bank so he asked me to phone them and check payment methods. When I did the receptionist point blank refused to speak English to me, my quandary was simply, “Do I need cash today?” But she was haughty and unsympathetic, another colleague took the phone, who even through garbled understanding felt kinder but it soon transpired that my appointment was for November 1st not October 1st.

“Im very ill i dont think I can wait that long.”

I phoned Meoclinic to be told by a woman with razors in her voice who suddenly became sickeningly sweet after she’d told me it was €400 just to see someone. I felt like the pleasure she was deriving from me tripping over my words and despairingly saying that was to much money for me, was enough for her to take home and masturbate over later, in her silky agent provocateur corset, on silk sheets, with a flute of champagne on the bedside table.

I gave up for the day and decided that tomorrow I’d go to the doctors I went to for my sti test a few months ago, they were very nice. They spoke english, they had open appointments the next day at 18h.

TUESDAY

More clots started coming, big, gloopy, just pouring out of me, they were announced by a tirade of blood, I was soaking through organic pads at an alarming rate.

So that wasn't the baby on Monday then.

I went to clean first, I cant afford to not clean for reasons stated above, at an office where the woman who employs me talks to me through gritted teeth as if our every interaction is painful to her.

Lowly pauper girl, know your place.

Anyway due to logistical issues she had probably not envisaged, I didn't do the whole job and left early. I walked out on to the money lined streets of Uhlandstrasse, Cara Delevine’s svelte androgynous eyes staring out at me from various glass paned monoliths, and sat on a moth eaten bench, very upset from the shift, feeling utterly worthless, responsible and at fault, bleeding.

Then I had a cigarette, collected myself and went to tk: Round 1.

I waited, gushing out blood, in line for 25 minutes to see the receptionist, then a further 10/15 to see the sales girl. I dont have to pay them straight away but when november comes I will have to pay them 720+€ , plus from then on 180€ a month, from an average wage of 800€.

In retrospect I was probably fully within my right to protest starting the contract from July 1st, but I was so grateful for someone health related to be talking to me in English and perhaps it will stand in my favour now the hospital bills will be tallying up.

I left with no card or proof of insurance.

I went home, lay down, then showered, laced my trainers and went back into the world depleted, to Mehringdam to see the emergency doctors, it was raining heavily outside.

They were different this time, I had no proof of insurance but I had the bears money so I was paying cash, I waited dutifully and wrote in my diary.

It was a different female doctor, a more boxy and less vital woman than the previous medic I’d met at the same clinic. About halfway into my bloody tale of woe she stopped me panic stricken.

“You know this is a doctors surgery, you have to go to a gynaecologist.”

“Ok, so you cant help me.” - i start putting my coat back on.

A pause.

“Can you at least refer me to one? I’ve had a hard time trying to find a gynaecologist, I can't really speak German, people have been very rude to me so far, I came back here because I remember people were kind and tried to help me, even though I wasn't sure it was the right place.”

We go out to reception where I stand in front of 2 receptionists who speak in German and totally ignore me, the doctor hands me some measly bits of paper with contact details printed on them and hurries away. Shaken from my bloody tale of woe I imagine she just sits in her office for 10 minutes alone obsessively sterilising her hands and shuddering.

I continue to look at the 2 women in front of me who carry on as if I am invisible for a further 5 minutes, I tell them I’m going to the toilet and then coming back, they brush me off. More blood pours out of me. I return and finally they allow me to pay them, I plod back out into the rain and miserably wait for a bus, head home via the shops and climb back into bed.

WEDNESDAY

Is a national holiday, so I can't sort anything, my client offers me the day off, I take it. I make 9 drawings for my project, bounce the rough edit of the album I’m working on, pull myself to the dance studio I’ve started to rent to practise my live show. Have a long overdue singsong, though I can't really dance i can still sing.

Sunday edit: I’ve since missed 2 bookings at the studio because of this infernal bleeding, hope I can go back soon, it was utterly riveting to finally find a place I could sing as loudly as I wanted.

It's a glorious day even though blood still rains, I’m not cleaning, I’m doing what i really want to do.

THURSDAY

I need to be at my clients early, but I go via the apotheke on the way, there a pharmacist advises me on the best way to take iron and vitamin supplements, sells me ibuprofen and alerts me to the gynaecologist upstairs, but she’s only open till 13h, my job is supposed to finish at that time.

I hum and haa as I hobble to my clients and when I get there decide to finish the job early and see if I can get an appointment.

On the way into the building there's a system of doors, I enter alongside an elderly gentleman with a walking stick and we have quite the time not understanding each other, me holding doors for him, him very jovially propping them open with his stick. I have no idea what’s being said but something tender and wonderful is occurring between us that puts a lightness back in my step.

This reception is slick and clean, the receptionist is neat and elegant. But the doctor isn’t there. They wouldn’t accept my tk insurance anyway, they’re going on holiday till November.

Ok,

I leave and just flop down on the street outside, I’m supposed to be doing a double clean today but I have a 2 hour window before my next job, which is only a 15 minute walk away. I’m getting closer to seeing someone. Still crouched down on the street, still bleeding, I dig out the contacts handed to me, one is for a doctors I’ve called before. I call 2 numbers from the 4 sheets I have, both go through to hard voiced women who utterly refuse to attempt to speak English to me and relish the goodbyes they bestow before they coldly put the phone down. To the second one I say in English:

“I’m really sick, but if I don’t speak German I am just going to continue to be sick, is that what you’re telling me?”

I found a list on google, theres a male gynaecologist just up the road, a man rummaging in my lady bits is a bit disconcerting but truly I’m beyond pride now.

This reception is more modest, I place my cleaning bucket on the floor and then just start with

“I’m losing a lot of blood, can you please help me.”

He’s in.

These receptionists are gorgeous humans, they speak to me in broken English, they’re shocked I’ve been bleeding for 3 weeks, yes he will see me, please take a seat.

He’s a big warm man with no sexual energy, I tell him everything, I feel so grateful just to be able to see him that I’m bowing as I say thank you. I get sent to a little room, remove my trousers and knickers, get let into another room, climb on the chair, he inserts the spy camera dildo (ultrasound) device inside me, then on the screen we look at a ball like thing inside my womb.

Hes glowing when he tells me its probably a very early pregnancy, he’s so excited, though it’ll most likely be a miscarriage, but he paints a future where my little fetus determinedly survives the bloodletting and in 9 months time arrives in my life.

I cover everything in blood, which freaks him out.

“You’re really bleeding a lot.”

He gives me the ultrasound photo, then after some confusion I go to the nurses and deposit a urine sample on the counter of another room.

“Thank you so much for seeing me.”

“Of course: you have been bleeding for 3 weeks.”

As I wait in the reception for the test results a new future, inconceivable before this point, rolls out before me, where I have the baby and take the government stipend to look after it as a single mother, I thought I didn’t want kids but something seems so precious about this vision. It’ll just be me and my little ball of love, together in some warm cosy flat in Prenzlauer Berg, surrounded by all the other Berlin mothers.

The test is negative, a jolt of dismay passes through me, the vision is shattered, I have to go to the hospital he says. They give me the bill, without proof of insurance I pay in cash, thanking the bear silently. He also tells me to go to my insurance and get a letter, because the hospital will really cost a lot.

So I go home, breathe and collect myself, go back out. Spend over an hour wandering around looking for a photo kiosk for my insurance card (not blind> I’m using google maps to try locate one), finally I find it nestled into a dark part of the s bahn station, it costs double what the machine costs but I just eat the charge, earlier I’d spend 30 minutes wandering around the crossroads outside Leopaldplatz: the fotofix on the map was apparently invisible, I need a picture. I then wait for another 30 minutes to have my photo taken.

When I get to the u bahn where tk is there is a fotofix booth right there, to my left as I walk out of the station, I really hold myself back from screaming and kicking over all the chairs arranged outside the cafe before me. I finally manage to call my sister and it's a glorious funny loving chat, cut short by the aforementioned man in the tk queue.

I tell him in english which he insists he doesn't understand, that I am having the day from hell and that was the first time I’ve managed to speak to that person, he abuses me again in German but then stands very far away from me, the shame weaving around him, I curse him, but its a little thing, just that I hope he gets eaten by spider babies.

Don’t take yourself too seriously.

I retrieve my letter from the receptionist, the same sales woman I spoke to on Tuesday who doesn’t recognise me at all.

It’s getting late in the day, I call back my sister and head to Charite Campus Mitte, as I get there it dawns on me this is where I was an extra on an art video shoot around 3 weeks ago.

There is no discernable entrance, it seems mostly deserted. I travel up in a lift towards the gynakolgie department, but when I exit the skybent box that is my vehicle there is no clear signage towards it, just a door to an emergency exit staircase, wind billowing behind it, with a note in fluoro yellow fixed on its metallic facade and a bridge / corridor leading to empty waiting rooms.

I give up, decide I’ll go to the address given to me by the doctors tomorrow. I’ll go home and sleep now.

Home, I eat then I crash, I get into bed at 19h, I’m still here its now 6am and I’ll try sleep a bit more before I get a taxi at 9am.

I’m scared

It’s like some sick version of the night before christmas, black humour and absurdity have been welcome companions but armour fades in bed, so writing this in the knowledge I will share it with the online community has been the only thing I can do to douse the fear.

I’ll probably have to beg receptionists later but I just hope I get to someone who can start to mend me, because the blood is still coming, for the first time since it started it stained my sheets last night but I’ve wiped them down a little.

Sunday edit: the sheets are now in the wash.

Saturday edit: they did see me, I’m having an operation on monday at 9:30, the saga continues because I have to rush back to the gynaecologists first on monday to get a note so I can be operated on : as by the time I got out of hospital on friday the gynaecologists surgery was closed and nothing is open on the weekends.

And on the anaesthetists form where it asked me who would be collecting me or looking after me for 24 hours after the procedure I stubbornly wrote noone. Though my mentor will be around as I swallowed my pride and asked her.

And, of course, I just expect more bullshit: that was my dads very astute advice:

“Expect more bullshit Felice.”

So then, yes I should speak German, yes I should of sorted my insurance, yes I’ve been irresponsible.

Saturday edit: I’ve been utterly irresponsible and disrespectful to the country I live in, I MUST learn German and make more of an effort to learn their culture, right now I’m truly an idiot abroad.

I might cancel all my jobs next week as well if I’m really sick, I might not be able to go to Krakow and watch Eartheater,

Saturday edit: All my jobs are cancelled, one of the days next week is my birthday, which I’d scheduled a double clean on so perhaps it’s not all bad.

But I’m not going to see Eartheater, if you’ve heard irisiri though ( LISTEN TO IT, I IMPLORE YOU, MORE THAN ONCE, on the first listen it’s quite harsh: https://alexdrewchin.bandcamp.com/releases) then you’ll immediately understand that not going to her show because I’m having my uterus forcibly wedged open and something cut out of it, is utterly appropriate, it’s like missing formula one because you got hit by a ferrari.

I hope I’ll be better by turin.

Saturday edit: very much.

I will still finish this project whatever happens.

Saturday edit: Now I have a week off it should help.

But I’m not 100% sure how I will make ends meet this month.

Saturday edit: Perhaps the polyp they cut out of me on monday is really an alien and I get paid hush money not to leak the story to the press.

I really miss the nhs, its a big soft Pugsy bear I just want to hug and hold and thank for everything it’s done for me over the years.

The german health system is an amalgamation of all these callous female receptionists, ignoring you and filing their niles whilst you just bleed out in front of them.

But still, I’m stubborn, its a test and i will overcome it whatever it is. I am not leaving berlin, I am standing taller, stronger and more powerful than before. I’ve experienced completely new angles and feelings this week, it’s been abhorrent but kind of sickly enjoyable as well. Life is always entertaining as it energetically throws its bounty of strangeness, cruelty and beauty (etc) at you.

It’s all good fun, even the dark days.

I’m going to try get a bit of shut eye now, might move my alarm back a little see if I can get 2 hours before i wake up to get a taxi.

Take care everyone, if you made it to the end then I guess thank you for reading as well, it’s a long fraught one this week eh?

#die teckniker #german healthcare #idiot abroad #self growth

0 notes