elbows

Sarah just came back from the doctor. She got here two days ago after a promotion stint on Mallorca where she was paid to sell sweets in the biggest disco place. Didn't really make much money. But she has a niiiiice tan now.

Anyway, she arrived here the day before yesterday with a hurting elbow after falling on it. As she had forgotten her health insurance card (Germany has a similar system to Taiwan, everybody has their health insurance card with all personal info on a chip), we had to get her a paper from her health insurance yesterday morning so that she could go and see a doctor. Managed to do that and then started looking for a doctor whose practice would be open on a Wednesday afternoon :-S Found one, she paid her 10 Euros doctor's fee (a new system to releave the massive debts in the German health system - doesn't seem to work very well and is, as lots of German inventions, so utterly complicated that nobody really gets it), didn't even have to wait too long, and he sent her off for x-rays. We walked to the first place he said would be open on a Wednesday - closed. We walked to the second place, actually right next to our house, and it was PACKED. And it turned out, her doc had forgotten to stamp the referral paper, so they wouldn't even take her name down to see her. We had to walk back to the practise to get the stamp. As the lady in the x-ray place had been sort of unfriendly and it was so packed that she'd probably only have gotten her x-rays late at night, she decided to wait until this morning and go to a different place (and we did some sight seeing instead).

She got up early this morning, got her x-rays fairly quickly, and it turns out - her left head of radius is cracked - the exact same bone that I cracked on 20 November last year when I walked out of a pub at 3 in the morning, with a couple of GTs too many and saving a (girls!) phone number in my cell phone. And not minding where I was going. And suddenly finding myself on the floor, wincing with pain after I had overlooked a couple of ankle-high barriers. (For those who don't know the rest of the story: I went home that night but could hardly sleep due to the pain, had to ask my neighbours to help me out of my sweater and went to a hospital early the next morning. The emergency doctor looked at the x-rays, immediately pulled them down from the light box, raced over to his colleague, and they called a specialist. It turned out the head of radius was cracked in three pieces which had to be taken out immediately as they were causing the pain. I was in surgery the next day, Sunday, at noon, spent one night at the hospital and was back at work on Tuesday. Except for a scar and the fact that it looks a bit crooked, my elbow is fine. And a friend of mine turned my three bone pieces into a cute little mini sculpture. - Btw, the barriers have been replaced with something less dangerous in the meantime)

Luckily for Sarah, it's only a crack, so no surgery, just a big cast. Unfortunately, she's going to Spain for a seaside holiday on Saturday :-( no swimming for her this time.