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What's Up Doc? - Part I - Dr. Andrea
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Part I - Dr. Andrea
The day that Steve and I moved into our apartment (which was two weeks ago), I came down with a cold. At first it was just a sore throat and a stuffy nose but it got progressively worse from there. Being the stubborn person that I am, I refused to take time to rest and spent most of the first week taking the train all over Cologne while Steve was at work.
One of the main reasons that I couldn't sit still was because of the fact that we do not yet have internet access in our apartment. So in order for me to post my journal entries and send emails, I had to take the train into town everyday to an Internet Café'. Since my cold didn't seem to be getting worse I wasn't really that concerned.
Well, last week my cough got really bad. The cold air outside made me wheeze and it was difficult to breathe. At times I would cough so much that my chest ached. I tried taking cough drops but those didn't help and I made several trips to the "Apothoteke" (pharmacy) down the street but that proved useless as well. Each time I went to get cough medicine, they gave me the same thing...cough syrup for kids. When I tried to explain that it wasn't working, they told me this..."Take more until cough goes away."
As my cough continued to get worse, my lungs began to bleed because they were so irritated from coughing so much. Steve and I agreed that it was time for me to see a doctor. He asked some of his coworkers at JCI if they knew of any English-speaking doctors in the area. His friends, Heike and Sabina were very helpful and even called a doctor's office for me. By 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday morning I was there meeting with a doctor named Andrea.
At first I was very nervous about going to see a doctor in a foreign country. I had no idea what to expect and feared that they would be just as difficult to communicate with as the pharmacists down the street. But I was pleasantly surprised once I got to the office and met Dr. Andrea, because she is probably one of the nicest doctors I have ever met.
Recognizing the fact that I didn't speak German, she did everything she could to make me feel welcome. I explained to her what was going on...that I had been coughing nonstop for a week and a half and that I just recently started coughing up blood. When I told her that I walked around for two weeks without a coat when I first got here, her first thought was that I had pneumonia. She immediately suggested that we run some blood work.
I grabbed my coat and was getting ready to leave (thinking she was going to send me to a lab like they do in Holland) when she said, "No, no...please stay." She walked into another room, came back with a needle and a couple of tubes, and drew my blood herself. I was quite surprised. Next she listened to my lungs and decided that I should get some chest x-rays done. Not knowing if she was going to pull an x-ray machine out of somewhere next, I waited to put my coat on. Only this time she gave me a referral slip to see a lung specialist.
Before I left her office, we talked for quite a bit. She asked me a lot of questions about my medical history and then some more questions about myself in general. For example, she was fascinated by the fact that we both had the same name. As she explained to me the name "Andrea" in Germany is very rare and is an older name given to children born in the 1950's and 1960's. I told her that Andrea is not a popular name in the U.S. either and that I had only met a few other people with the same name. I think she likes the fact that we both have the same name because now she's not the only one in Cologne called Andrea anymore!
As I was about to leave, she gave me a hug and said, "Don't worry, we fix you up as best we can! We set a "meet" (that's what they call appointments here) for next Monday to see how you are doing after we see pictures, OK?"
I left her office with a referral slip to see the lung doctor and on my train ride there, I had some time to process a few things. I found it quite ironic that it took traveling 5,000 miles away from home for me to find a doctor that I could relate to so well. What I found even more interesting is the fact that in Germany when you have a doctor's appointment, you actually see the doctor...not a nurse practitioner or an physicians assistant like we see back home.
Before we left for Germany I told Steve that one of my biggest fears about coming here was medical care. What would happen if one of us got sick? Where would we go to find a doctor when everyone only speaks German. Well, I can finally put my fears to rest because if I ever get sick again, I know that Dr. Andrea is only two train stops away!
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| 23. | What's Up Doc? - Part I - Dr. Andrea - Cologne, Germany Dec 13, 2007 |
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