By Rosemary Kluth
No Cornwall for me this year. To my huge disappointment, I landed in hospital on the first leg of our trip from Hamburg, leaving my husband to explore Solingen, the Rhineland steel mecca, on his own.
I had already waited nine hours to see a doctor at our local A & E, and been cleared to go on holiday the next day. Not a good decision, as it turned out.
Arriving on foot at the Städtisches Klinikum Solingen, I was whisked straight through the crowded waiting room with a suspected, and subsequently confirmed, pulmonary embolism. I then underwent all sorts of tests and scans so fast that I remember virtually nothing of the process, and soon found myself in ICU, comprehensively cabled and monitored. Never having been in a mixed ward before, I was rather disconcerted to find that the other three patients in the room were male. The beds were curtained off, and I was given ear plugs, just in case. I spent three days in ICU, getting on surprisingly well with my roommates. Rhinelanders are known for their sense of humour, and these guys were no exception, so I was quite sad to be moved on after Whitsun.
The cardiology ward I arrived in was also mixed, though the rooms themselves were segregated. My new room had a view, three beds in a row, a table and two chairs, lockers and an ensuite bathroom. We each had a bedside trolley with a tray attached for meals. There was a small-screened TV somewhere among the monitoring equipment above my head, but I never got a chance to try it out. I heard there was a large TV in the corridor for patients who were mobile enough to watch the news, football, etc. Also, a cafeteria, but alas – I was confined to my bed!
The day started at 5.00 am with first injections and infusions, after which we were left to sleep till breakfast at eight. Lunch was at midday, and supper – frustratingly early – at five. The food was unexciting but acceptable, especially after my husband told the staff I didn’t eat margarine – a fact that I had been too British to mention!
The nurses and medics originated from all over the world, some of them children and grandchildren of the “guest workers” invited to Germany in the mid-1950s to help rebuild the war-torn economy. Others were more recent incomers. The nurses were great, bobbing in and out all day to attend to our medical needs and see if we were all OK. They were invariably friendly and polite, even when the very elderly dementia patient on my right was less than compliant, or rang constantly – and often needlessly – for attention.
On the third day, it was discovered that my other roommate was a private patient. From then on, she was brought a choice of local morning papers and a snazzy restaurant-type menu, from which to choose her meals. At three in the afternoon, she was offered a selection of coffee/tea specialities and tasty-looking cake. This was the last straw! I decided to own up that I too had private health insurance – a little reluctantly, of course, because I always feel guilty about getting preferential treatment. Someone immediately turned up to move our beds to a private room. We both declined to go, as we had become good friends with our little old lady, and were happy to stay and keep her company. Amusingly, it later transpired that she was an ex-circus artiste with a famous escapist father, but that’s another story! Unfortunately, the decision not to move meant that I had no chance to inspect a private room, or test the facilities, which, in retrospect, would have been interesting.
My only slight niggle in Solingen was that the necessary follow-up tests sometimes involved long waits for transport. Apparently, the transport section was desperately understaffed, so that when anyone was off sick, or the hospital was particularly busy, nearly an hour’s wait for your bed to be pushed back to the ward was not unusual. I soon learned to take a book and my mobile with me, the latter to alert any unsuspecting visitors to my whereabouts.
I was discharged after a week, feeling that I had been thoroughly well looked after in a friendly and relaxed atmosphere. This was in marked contrast to my last stay in a major Hamburg hospital, where the atmosphere was efficient but cool, and we patients were made very aware that the place was being run as a business, and patients shouldn’t waste time with questions or indeed chat. Medically, I couldn’t fault them, but I wouldn’t choose to go there again.
I’m now wondering how this compares with the NHS, so would welcome any comments or questions, and hope that perhaps someone might feel inspired to write a few notes about a similar experience in a UK hospital. After all, if all this had happened a few days later, that’s where I would have been.
Sad about our Cornish holiday but all’s well that ends well – better luck next year!
