Surprise! You Need Surgery

So, I got surgery. I wouldn’t really recommend the whole experience but I’m glad it’s over with now.

The past couple of weeks, I’ve had a pretty painful lump in my chest. Even the feeling of my shirt touching my skin was almost excruciating, but because of the other craziness going on with school and travel, I wasn’t able to make it to the doctor’s office.

Until last week, that is. I went to the general practitioner I’ve gone to in the past here, and they looked at it and seemed to know pretty quickly what it was. The doctor said they couldn’t operate on it there, and gave me a slip of paper to refer me to one of the nearby hospitals. At first I wasn’t sure that I understood everything. I knew the word “operieren” meant “to perform surgery” but that seemed so unlikely, I thought there must be a different context to the word that I didn’t know. Spoiler alert: there wasn’t.

After I got to the hospital and checked in, they directed me to the emergency room waiting room, where I spent the next couple of hours. I had contacted Kris Riggs, the BCA program director, by that point, and he came to help make sure I was understanding everything that the doctor’s were saying and that they understood everything I was saying. I definitely appreciated it.

Waiting Rooms

I noticed something interesting while sitting in the various waiting rooms for various periods of time. One of the big differences between American and German cultures is our response to strangers. In America, when we pass a stranger on the street, we’ll give a small smile of acknowledgement, a way of saying “hello, you’re a human being in my vicinity.” That’s just considered polite. In Germany, however, that is not done, and their expression in response usually reads to an American as “disgust and hatred.” I suspect their thoughts are really more along the lines of “why is this weird stranger smiling at me” than anything with actual malice, but that’s still how it feels.

I kinda assumed that this would be a similar situation in the doctor’s office and in a hospital, if not more extreme. I mean, I’ve never really spoken to anyone in a waiting room in the U.S. (except for family members who were with me, of course), so why would it be different in Germany? But every time someone new walked into the waiting room, they would say “Guten Morgen” or “Hallo” and everyone would say hello back. And when someone left, they would say goodbye, and everyone would say goodbye back. I later mentioned this to a couple of friends, and they confirmed it. One person explained it as it’s a way of offering support and comfort when people are sick.

The Surgery

Eventually, I was called in for the doctor to look at the lump. He agreed with the original doctor’s verdict, that surgery was needed to remove the lump, which he said was basically like a pimple, just way deeper underneath the skin. (Gross). A blood test and another two hours in the waiting room later, it was time for the surgery itself.

As I watched one of the surgeons upend a bag of scissors and scalpels onto the table beside the bed, I struggled not to start laughing at the absurdity of it all. I don’t know what I expected the doctor’s to suggest when I went to their office that morning, but surgery wasn’t it. I certainly didn’t expect to get surgery that same day.

They only gave me a local anesthetic, so I was awake during the entire procedure. I won’t mince words here: it sucked. A lot. Because the area they were operating on was already sensitive and hurting, the injection of the local anesthetic alone brought me to tears. And there were moments in the surgery where it was very painful, even with the anesthesia. The entire operation took around forty minutes.

Despite how bad it all was, I’m grateful for the doctors at the hospital. They did their best to comfort me and make sure I understood what was going on. When speaking to me, they would try to speak in English (with some German words mixed in when they couldn’t remember the word in English). Although, I was actually kind of surprised by how much of the German conversation between themselves I was understanding throughout the surgery. Which, I guess that’s a good sign for where I’m at in my language learning.

At the end of the surgery, before they gave me the final papers and things to leave, the doctors told me I was brave during the surgery because I didn’t scream or move around a lot. I’m sure that’s something they tell most patients, but I appreciated it nonetheless.

Recovery

The recovery process in the past week has been alright. I was sore the first few days, but now I have no pain at all. I had to go back to the hospital and to the regular doctor’s office a couple of times for them to check how it was healing and to give me fresh bandages. Next Thursday, I will go back to the general practitioner’s office to have my stitches removed. If I’m lucky, that will be the last time I have to go to the doctor’s office here at all.

A Baptism!

On a lighter note, this past Wednesday one of the members of the castle was baptized in the chapel. Since it’s the end of semester, several people are moving out of the castle. Jan is the person who has lived here the longest, for ten years, and he’s one of the people who are leaving. I’m not completely certain, but I think part of the reason why he got baptized now was related to that. Everyone in the castle was given a page to write a message or do art, and then all these pages were bound together into a book as a gift for him after the baptism.

The baptism itself was a great ceremony. The chorus group sang a few songs on their own, everyone there sang some songs together, a couple of people gave short speeches. And then Jan was baptized.

Afterwards, there was a big dinner party. I had some good conversations with the people around me, although the end of the semester was at the top of everyone’s minds. At one point, I mentioned that I found the system here, with final papers being written after the end of the semester, stressful. One of the people sitting near me had studied for a year in America, and thought our system was more stressful, because you had more work on top of having classes. I can sympathize with that. He did say the nice thing about the American system is when you’re done with finals week, you’re done. No sort-of on break, sort-of not like here. On that, we can both agree.

Visit with Erin and then a Choir Show

Yesterday, I got to see a friend I haven’t seen in a while! I know Erin from high school — we were in the same German class my junior year. That class was a lot of fun, partially because everyone in the class became good friends.

It’s been about two years since we’ve really hung out — last year, she studied for a full year abroad in Germany, and got back to the States around the same time that I left. However, in January, she moved back here and lives in a city near me. She had a test in Marburg Saturday morning, and so we met up in the afternoon. I’m so glad I got to see her again.

We walked up to the castle and I gave her a short tour. The weather was really nice out, so we just kind of sat outside in the garden and talked. It was really nice to hang out and talk, and it’s definitely been a while since I laughed that hard. I definitely plan to visit her soon, once I’m done with all my papers and have everything finished with my transcript.

Saturday was pretty eventful, because after Erin left, I met up with some friends I’d made last December, on the trip to the Wortreich language museum. To celebrate the end of the semester, there was a choral concert at the University church. Nóra-Bríd invited us and we paid her back for the tickets when we arrived. I was really glad to see them again, too; we’ve all been busy the past couple of months. It’s a trend that’s unlikely to change in the near future. All three of us are international students who have to worry about getting transcripts back to our home universities and getting papers signed from our professor’s. Even though the due date for our papers may not be until the end of March, we really have to turn them in a lot sooner than that.

The chorus performance was beautiful. I always love to hear choral music. There was also a dance group that did two dance intermissions. To be honest, I thought the dances were a little strange. However, the dancers entered the second dance by crawling over the pews of people. We had balcony seats and saw it all from above. The effect was admittedly, very cool.

What I’m listening to this week: Fire Drills by Dessa.