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At the doctor (Part 1) – Day 4 of Advent

There is a certain irony about this post, which will be clear later (as it turns out, possibly in a later post). But lets start with a photograph relating to yesterday’s Advent Calendar Activity (ACA).

The activity was to make a really decadent hot chocolate. Our first attempt at this was actually somewhat of a failure, which you might find unbelievable. But we discovered that neither Little nor I particularly like cocoa – and that is what the recipe in the book asked for. We are both really used to “instant drinking chocolate” (of the sort that does not contain artificial sweeteners). So – if this can be defined as a problem at all, then it is a problem with a very easy solution (PVES).

I had bought one of those aerosol-container whipped creams, and now Little is consuming it with her tea as well, because she really does not want it to “go off”.

After Little had left to go to school – she takes the bus on her own these days – I did some work, and then went to an appointment with a therapist. The medical journey from arriving in Berlin to this appointment has been interesting, and I thought that I would write a little about it .

Step 1: Sort out Health Insurance. This is one of the things that had to be in place before getting paid. We use TK (Die Techniker Krankenkasse), because it is what was recommend to us, and because it is geared up for dealing with English-speaking people.

Step 2: Find a general practitioner. I used this database to find someone that spoke English who practised close to where we live. We needed to find two doctors: a general practitioner for Alain and me, and a paediatrician for Little.

In the UK, the same person would treat all three people, but in Germany this is not the case. You can take a child to your GP for an acute sickness (if e.g. the paediatrician does not have space to see you), but not for general health “things”. And one relevant “thing” is to sort out vaccinations.

When coming from the UK, it is Very Useful to get a list of the vaccinations that your children have received. We did not think about this, but this record is much more important for school attendance in Germany than it is in the UK.

e.g. While the doctor that performed the required Health Check before attending school was happy to sign her off as “healthy”, if anyone in the school got measles, she would have to stay home, because I did not have a document in place to prove she had been vaccinated.

On almost every form relating to “what we will do in an emergency”, it was necessary to say – and have documentation to show – when the last tetanus vaccination was. So – the first medical step for Little was to start a Vaccination document with a tetanus injection.

Finding a paediatrician with space for more patients proved impossible for me to do on my own. So I made an appointment with a normal GP and made a list of things of all such things that I needed help with. When I mentioned the vaccinations, she asked me whether I had a vaccination record. I was gobsmacked. I don’t – certainly not one that is complete. And the last time I was vaccinated against anything was more than 20 years ago.

She gave me a few slips of paper, one of which was a request to get a Tetanus-Diptheria-Pertussis injection.

The person at the front desk of the doctor’s practise – the person who had admitted me to the waiting room was the same person that gave me the injection. It happened immediately after my appointment. That the nurse has both roles is interesting: the practise had two people with this role (that I could see) so the waiting time was not very long and it means that it is not necessary to have a separate appointment for a routine vaccination or blood test. She was also able to supply contact details for a paediatrician in another practise that had spaces for new patients.

I started out this post thinking that I would definitely be able to say everything I wanted to say about doctors visits, but I think it is already rather long, so will continue sometime else.

After doing some work in the office, I went to collect Little from orchestra – another separate topic (!), dropped off a rather large pile of items at the library, collected a parcel from the DHL office – yet another topic(!), and came home to crochet / watch an episode of Poirot.