The German Doctor

I alluded to my first visit to the German doctor in my Paris post. I was brave for two, long days after the stress-induced seizing up of my neck, but in a weak moment, Web MD's information about meningitis got the best of me, and after a frenzied 2 am phone call to my Mom, I made a doctor's appointment to make sure I wasn't dying.

And for real, I couldn't move. I just laid there "whimpering," as Jordan put it, most of the night, because I couldn't turn my head an inch (or centimeter, as we say in Europe) and felt constant pain. My phone call to the doctor was brief, and largely aided by Google Translator. I hung up, hoping that I had made an appointment.

A few hours later, Jordan and I were on our way to the doctor. The drive took about one minute. (I love living in a small town!) Fifteen frantic minutes after we parked, though, we found exactly where the office was located. Once inside, I gave them my name, and we sat down in the waiting room where I "read" an article about Kate and William in the German version of People magazine. Having been deprived of my secret habit of reading People (#justonvacation #idon'tsubscribe, #don'tjudgeme #it'smymom'sfault) for two long months, during which time a royal baby was born, I've never wished I understood German as much as I did during those 10 minutes in the waiting room.

I'd heard rumors that doctors in Germany don't follow the same social norms for patients undressing as we do in the states. Aka, there are no paper gowns. And the doctor doesn't leave you alone, in private, to change. So I was not completely surprised when, after asking me a few questions about my pain, the doctor told me I could take my shirt off, while he finished up a few notes. Thankfully, I'd thought ahead, and worn an undershirt.

After I few minutes of poking and pushing on my neck, the doctor told me that "the muscles have had too much contractions." Just as I suspected. My treatment? Two prescriptions. One for physical therapy. The other, for pain medication that I later learned is banned in the US except for treatment of large farm animals, because of its risk of some disease I can't pronounce. 30 drops every 4 hours. In addition to my prescriptions, I was to have three treatments of electrotherapy, beginning right away.

The nurse ushered me into a different room where she proceeded to hook me up to a machine using four large suction cups with wet sponges inside. She set the timer for 10 minutes. Thankfully, I had asked her if "mein Mann" could join me, because two minutes later I was blacking out and Jordan was running to get the nurse. She burst in, turned off the machine, popped the suction cups off my back, and heaved my legs into the air where she held them for several minutes until I came to. By this time, the doctor had joined us. "You are okay?" he asked. "Yes, I think so," I replied.  "Good. We try again."

The second attempt was successful, and after a few weeks, and 480 drops of medicine, my neck felt much better.

Homesick

Though I feel little pangs of sadness and homesickness for the places I love, it is a comfort to know that they are there. Not only can I mentally walk the streets of Lake Bluff, noting the familiar cracks in the sidewalk, and admiring the street corners where the leaves are surely burning red this week, but even as I write, people are walking those streets, the leaves crunching beneath their feet. Some of them are strangers, but others are so dear, the lines on their faces as familiar to me as the cracks on the sidewalk.

I remember visiting West Palm Beach after graduating and after breaking up with Jordan. It felt so empty; so hollow. Like seeing Nana lying in the hospital bed after she died. It wasn't her anymore. West Palm Beach felt like a body void of its soul apart from the people who made the place so dear.

It is the people that make the place what it is, yet it is not people I have missed since moving to Germany. I miss the places. I miss Lake Geneva's silky, warm waters. I miss Breckenridge, with its crisp mountain air and sunny skies. I miss Captiva and the familiar crunch beneath my feet as I walk to the beach on streets made from crushed bits of shell.

Lake Geneva, Wisconsin

Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs

Captiva Island, Florida

Vail, Colorado

This is not a new phenomenon for me, this missing of places. Freshman year of college in Florida, I plastered my walls with pictures of my beloved Lake Bluff. Sophomore year, I longed for the warm beaches of Florida, as I spent a semester studying in Colorado. Junior year, my desk was adorned with pictures of Colorado...

Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs

 

Lake Dillon, Silverthorne, Colorado

I am often longing for...elsewhere. Dreaming of the day when I will return. And when I do, it's not long before the elusive desire for elsewhere grabs me again.

Is that why I wander?

South Park, Colorado

“If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy,
 the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”
--C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
 

Perhaps that is the reason I long for elsewhere...

...I am homesick.