I could have slapped myself. Once left, gossip, once right, gossip. Why had not I booked a holiday for today’s Ash Wednesday? Instead sleep with fever and chills, without having moved on with the harem pants in the caravan. Except for this dreary cap session, miserable predicate, humoristic just below the loins, the fifth season had passed me by without a trace. Werner and I had missed our living room during the great days a new wallpaper dress. Retro look. And here, God knows where, maybe between wallpaper and paste, captured an insidious virus.
Despite flannel pajamas and Granny’s own woolen stockings, I shivered with cold, and one chill after the other chased my back. The scale of the clinical thermometer climbed to a life-threatening 39 degrees Celsius. I felt like I was dying, and I had only one wish: sleep, sleep, sleep. “I’ll call your company, Eva, and get you sick,” Werner had promised in the morning, while I feebly dawned into the morning.
At some point I woke up, and my first thought was for the colleagues. Uh-oh! All too well I could imagine their suggestive comments. In my ears between hammer, anvil and stirrup made her pointed remarks: “Who can drink, can also work.”
If only it had been a hangover … I would have chased him with two Aspirin. Did not use anything For my rehabilitation with colleagues and boss I had to get a sick report. In my condition a dilemma. Of necessity, I mobilized last reserves and shuffled to the phone on the corner of the table. Crying, I asked the receptionist: “I need an appointment urgently, I got caught, almost forty fever.”
In response, I sprang up like a strained willow rod upright on the mattress: “Pardon me? You have no date available? Should I sit in the waiting room for about three hours?”
In no time, my voice had changed from pitiful to aggressive. Unbelievable! I could hardly stand on my feet and should be in this state in the doctor’s office. Where I would have expected, if not the rescue helicopter, but at least the ambulance for a personal home visit. Yes, well, I was not a private patient. I also expected no privileges. But even as a statutory health insurance, I had a right to life-support measures.
“… remind Dr. Müller of his Hippocratic …”
“… for eleven, I’ll sign you up at eleven o’clock, but be prepared for waiting, it’s jam-packed,” the poison noodle stopped me and hung up. Torn between my reputation as an unremarkable worker and my aversion to medical practices with rattling, sniffling people, I decided to go to the doctor. I dragged myself to the bathroom. Oh, how I would have liked to put myself in the hot tub instead of shivering in the shower. And I prefer to be cured with home remedies. Hot milk with honey, hot lemon. Better not, just at the thought of lemons, the scratching in my throat intensified. As a keen reader of the health counselor, I typed on tonsured almonds. At least. This was not to joke. Did I already have my will? Oh,
Deep, dark shadows under the eyes, without further indication for durchzechte nights, I discovered with a mirror look and frottierte me by putting last power reserves dry. With a feeling of “I do not care” I steered my car to the practice of my family doctor, whom I had consulted at most once a quarter on the basis of a pill prescription. So far, to the delight of the Health Solidarity Pact, I have been a model of robust health and sparing the budget.
I dragged myself to the registration, where the doctor’s diary received me with a “There you are, your insurance card please” and with Verve put a green check mark behind my name, after she had interested in my data flown over on the screen. Luckily, my medical record did not give much. In vain sniffed. I could not resist a certain malice.
Despite the limited sense of smell, when I entered the waiting room, I found a mixture of damp wool, sweat, menthol and nose-wracking scented water. Like chickens on the perch, women, elderly men and snot-nosed children squeezed on red-upholstered metal chairs. My “Good morning” was generally submerged in murmurs, geniuses, and clutches. Yes, face masks would have been appropriate in this virus frenzy field. As announced, the patients literally piled themselves up in this mouseclot of waiting room with partly tattered magazines on the glass table in the middle. I only had the choice between standing room and standing room. I considered waiting in the draughty log-in area, but then joined the standing room next to a coughing man, who prized me out of the corner of my eye. At eye level with colorful children’s drawings, I let my pupils wander imperceptibly over the people present. I jumped in alarm as the loudspeaker in the left corner of the room directly above me said “Frau Meier, Ilse Meier, please go to the lab”. Under moaning, a heavily overweight woman in her fifties rose from her chair. Copper-red ringlets framed her rosy, chubby face. Ilse Meier shuffled into the lab with swollen feet, her tight red top emphasizing every greasy fold down to the hips, and a mighty bosom swaying up and down as she walked. All eyes were sure. as from the speaker in the left corner of the room directly above me the announcement “Mrs. Meier, Use Meier, please go to the lab”, snarled. Under moaning, a heavily overweight woman in her fifties rose from her chair. Copper-red ringlets framed her rosy, chubby face. Ilse Meier shuffled into the lab with swollen feet, her tight red top emphasizing every greasy fold down to the hips, and a mighty bosom swaying up and down as she walked. All eyes were sure. as from the speaker in the left corner of the room directly above me the announcement “Mrs. Meier, Use Meier, please go to the lab”, snarled. Under moaning, a heavily overweight woman in her fifties rose from her chair. Copper-red ringlets framed her rosy, chubby face. Ilse Meier shuffled into the lab with swollen feet, her tight red top emphasizing every greasy fold down to the hips, and a mighty bosom swaying up and down as she walked. All eyes were sure. Ilse Meier shuffled into the lab with swollen feet, her tight red top emphasizing every greasy fold down to the hips, and a mighty bosom swaying up and down as she walked. All eyes were sure. Ilse Meier shuffled into the lab with swollen feet, her tight red top emphasizing every greasy fold down to the hips, and a mighty bosom swaying up and down as she walked. All eyes were sure.
“Ilse would absolutely have to slim down,” a woman hissed to her mustachioed neighbor on the left. Either the lady had a permanent subscription in a tanning salon or just recently made a holiday by the sea. Deep brown, her features turned against the winter-pale, colorless faces of those waiting. Wrinkles, more like furrows, pervaded her whole face. A thick layer of powder had settled in the pores. The brightly painted eyes rounded off the exaggerated make-up. In addition platinum .
“Hypertension, diabetes, shortness of breath, that’s no life, Dominik,” I heard her continue to prick as the man was already called and disappeared around the corner. When the empty chair remained vacant, I seized the opportunity, which I immediately regretted, for with Ilse her body heat had also spread on the chair. Very uncomfortable. From my current position, I was able to observe people even more easily and unabashedly. “Mom, how long will it take?” a curly-haired creature whined and, bored, closed the picture-book with the dog’s ears. A very young mother sat on the opposite side of me, her baby crying. I did not understand why a practice asked this little thing such a virus pool. Should it be a form of hardening? All efforts of the mother to calm her child, pacifier, tea bottle, caresses failed. The little one screamed louder and louder. The conversations in the room ebbed away. A raven mother, I read in many eyes, unable to get a grip on the whining troublemaker. Even with me, the screaming tore at the nerves, nevertheless I encouraged the young woman:
“Go out and get it.” Confused staring at the woman in the round looked and hectic red spots covered her hirsute face. I gave her a benevolent smile and she apologized.
“I do not have an appointment, and this is a busy day.” The little one was now close to a screaming fit. Belly stroking, backpitching missed completely their effect. “My pediatrician is on holiday, if you do not have an appointment, you have to wait, even with a child.”
In despair, she rocked her child, which was now crimson, calming back and forth. Two more children joined in the wine choir. Almost unbearable. The displeasure of those present in mind, the young mother finally did the right thing. t. The child instantly relaxed. I did not understand why she had not done the same, but was taught otherwise. A woman, type nasty mother-in-law, with drooping corners of her mouth and hawk’s eyes, could not resist her comment.
“There would have been no such thing in our time, just unpack the chest in public, no, no, the young people of today, no decency, like the animals.”
Several protested.
you do not have to be ashamed of it – on the contrary, Bravo, young woman, that you only want the best for your baby, “commented a white-haired, approximately seventy-year-old woman and nodded, smiling, to the nurse.
A man who resembled my docile grandpa was upset and gave a lecture on natural baby food: “Unfortunately, my wife did not our two girls, was frowned upon at the time, deliberately controlled by the baby food industry there is no closer relationship between mother and child than , we are glad that even children are born at all – when can mothers still be these days? “
With a proud chest he looked around. “I have four grandchildren, for my daughters, nothing else would have been possible except – all healthy, satisfied children.”
The opponents of public were silent and stared grimly to themselves. The platinum blond also made her lips a contemptuous line. I felt too weak to admit my mustard, but silently agreed with the man with the four grandchildren and smiled at him. As a general relief, the mothers were called one by one with the children to the treatment rooms.
As before, there was a lot of traffic in practice. A single coming and going. Empty chairs were left unoccupied for a minute. I already waited half an hour. I snuggled closer into my warm jacket and shivered to myself. With half my ear, I listened to the blaze all around. No doubt, here you knew each other. Discretion seemed to be a foreign word. They paled over athlete’s foot, boils and fibroids. Worse, with no sign of sensitivity, they vied with their case histories, as if it were an Olympiad of ill health. I would have liked headphones in order to escape circulatory disorders, thyroid hyperfunction, varicose veins and, finally, this impersonation.
Smoker’s leg, otherwise I would have been looking at the radishes from below for a long time – they would not have seen any of those blocked veins in the last thirty years. “My body is the purest pattern I’m still alive. “
But these four sentences of the lean-mole sufficed to release a long-lasting fit of coughing, from red to dark blue. He gasped like a fish in the dry.
I frowned as I noticed his yellow fingertips and immediately opened the drawer chain smoker. How right I was! Smoker’s leg already fingered a packet of cigarettes from his trouser pocket, stuffed it back and rummaged for the asthma spray instead. It hissed for a moment as it sprayed into his mouth.
“Smoke ‘one more, Rudi Then it will be better”, his neighbor blasphemed, before we were present witness of his medical history: “What do you think, my dear, what has resulted in the gastroscopy? Gastric ulcers. And what things. Only oatmeal the next few weeks, a cool blond or a clear is in the dream not to thinkthere is an inflamed pancreas, my dear.This are pain.There, however, the torture methods of the Indians purest caresses, “he put the asthmatic Rudi on it, the as good as no air got, but it was painless.
“Pancreatitis,” he repeated, stretched. Rudi protested coughing.
“I’ve been caught three times this winter,” moaned a small man with full hair, sniffing steadily at his pace. I looked up interested. A fellow sufferer?
“You do not bother a doctor with such kinkerlitzchen.” “You put up with Grog, Fritz,” Rudi reprimanded his counterpart, before a fit of coughing prevented him from further talking and kept us from further details.
If an accident was to blame, I had not thought up yet, when a third with white head bandage, muted voice and tortured expression told:
“Last week, I had a brain tumor removed from my body.” I jumped off the scythe at the last second if my wife had not chased me to the doctor because of an unbearable headache, so I would not be sitting here today, because Egon Wirz would not live among the living . “
Here he made a meaningful break. Judging by the looks of the waiting room occupants, brain tumors were obviously ranked very high on the disease scale. I felt more and more uncomfortable by the minute in this round. Where did I land here? In the forecourt of hell. Did I actually have a right to be here? With something as profane as sore throat and fever between all the doomed around. First remorse broke out, and I mentioned leaving the “hall”. But I stayed, and I was not spared further details of dysfunctional health.
“With me, the bile was removed, gallstones as big as pebbles,” a grumpy dry-haired guy with pomaded strands of hair began to talk to, without even receiving a moment’s attention with that statement, because each of us stared at the door, in the one Hüne of almost two meters emerged. Due to his healthy complexion, which shimmered slightly purple, I suspected someone who was spending a lot of time outdoors. His left arm was held in place by an originally white bandage, now blood-soaked, and he raced without a “good day” when, judging by his facial expressions, he saw familiar faces in the waiting room. “Well, you hypochondriacs, if you were bored at home again, you always have to steal the doctor’s time.”
“What massacre have you escaped, Walter,” the flu patient wanted to know, with whom I would like to have solidarized myself. The asthmatic blasphemed: “Had potato peeling had an enemy contact, eh?”
“Oh, Larifari, split firewood this morning, and the ax slipped and hugged me in the arm.” I went through to the bone. “
I was quite dull in the stomach. Then this Walter went about carefree with a sore wound and acted as if he had made blood brotherhood with the ax.
“Bled as if you had stabbed a sow.” “Had amputated me by a hair’s breadth, pig.”
Many in the waiting room admired him like a hero. “I’m sure it hurts,” said the man named Fritz, even offering his chair out of compassion.
I’m not a coward, a real man has to be able to withstand pain, doctor’s visits are female stuff, I have not even been to the doctor for the last twenty years, nothing for me, but my old woman did not rest, “he lolled the care of the others.
I just thought, what a braggart, what a macho and the desire to run away became bigger and bigger. What did I want here? If I did not stop within the next few minutes … Annoyed, I continued to follow the martial fairy tale hour.
“You must not joke with that, Walter,” Ms. Sunbreaken intervened, and she continued, “You will need a revitalization of tetanus, and if the cut is so deep, you must sew.”
“Certainly not,” Walter protested, as the loudspeaker voice asked him to enter the treatment room. My adrenaline level rose in parallel with the fever. This nature boy had just come. Without appointment. Was double standards measured here? I considered making an example and leaving the practice under protest, sick leave, health certificate, when Mrs. Sonnenbraun raved:
“Yes, yes, Walter, he’s a real man, a fighter, he does not seem to be upset,” when, immediately afterwards, a bloodcurdling scream came from one of the treatment rooms and from then on the general noise level of at least eighty decibels Zero drove down. Even the phones did not interrupt that silence. After the first shock we all flocked to the corridor. What happened? Indiscretedly, we rushed to the treatment room, from which we had suspected the scream and recognized a pale-faced Walter Mager, who was just revived. Before the doctor ushered us out, calming us down with the words: “Do not worry, all right, Mr. Mager chose for the tetanus vaccination only a general anesthetic.