Das Krankenhaus: Or how I got Pneumonia in Berlin and (hopefully) live.

One way to learn about a new place is to go to cultural centers, museums, eat the food and meet new people. Another way is to get an incapacitating, sometimes even fatal, ailment. I chose the former, but the latter chose me. And once again, my lack of assertiveness got the best of me.

It started out with fatigue, aches in strange places, and a sudden lack of appetite, even for beer, even during a World Cup game. Then the coughing started: wheezing fits of hacking that caused people on the street to steer clear (or was that the dog?). Each cough caused my eyeballs to strain against their sockets, and made it feel as if my windpipe would implode. One fit was so violent that it threw my back out (which in turn was wracked with a sharp pain with each cough). I ended up prone and delirious. The only problem was, we had things to do, so I had to pull myself up and stagger down the street to school offices in far-flung parts of the city. This was during the recent heat wave, by the way; 90 F plus himidity. And the subway is at least ten degrees warmer, kind of like a moving sauna, with everyone packed together, trying not to look at each other or at the guy with the accordian trying to collect money. And then there was the guy coughing as though he had tuberculosis. That was me.

I drank lots of fluids and tea. I ate vitamin C and turmeric until it oozed from my pores. I took hot baths in spite of the heat. I slathered my body with Vicks vapor rub as though I were a menthol turkey getting ready for Thanksgiving.

That natural stuff, it soon became clear, wouldn't be enough. I needed some Nyquil and Aspirin, stat. But when I went to the grocery store, I only found more homeopathic/naturopathic remedies. Okay, I thought, it's pretty progressive to have this stuff in the corner store, but where's the heavy artillery? Turns out that in Germany, you can't even buy aspirin in the store. You have to go to the Apotheke, or pharmacy, and then specifically ask for what you want. You even must explain your symptoms. This was a challenge.

"Ich habe ein schlimmel Husten," I said, only to be answered with the usual Gatlin-gun, incomprehensible Deutsch. "Ich verstehe nicht," I continued. "Ich spreche nur ein Bissen Deutsch. Langsam bitte."* And so it went until I got some kind of nasty tasting syrup that was probably good enough, along with a box of aspirin. Proud to have communicated successfully, and relieved, I went home and started pounding the stuff. No improvement.

In fact, things started getting worse. When I slept on my right side, things were moderately okay -- I'd only erupt into coughing once every hour or so. But when I rolled over onto my right side, an eerie sound emanated from my lungs. It was reminiscent of tinfoil balls rolling across crumpled newspaper. That is not a sound that should come from a human body.

My kids started looking at me with that so-I-guess-I'm-about-to-be-a-quasi-orphan look. And Wendy gave me that why-didn't-you-get-life-insurance-when-I-told-you-to-you-jerk look. And it seemed prudent to get some medical help. All the doctors were closed, so we had to go to the emergency room, halfway across town. This entailed more walking; more subway rides; more walking. Now, before you socialist types get all excited about me taking advantage of that free European health care, you should know something: Health care in Germany is not free. In fact, they are on a mandatory health insurance system, just like the U.S. will be soon enough. I haven't been here long enough to get that insurance. That meant I had to pay 100 Euros up front, and they'll bill me for the rest later.

The Berlin E.R. was a grim place, with people all around who seemed barely to be clinging to life. So when I told the receptionist that I had a bad cough, she gave me that what-a-sissy snicker. When I told her I thought I might have pneumonia, she looked at me with a questioning frown. So I read her the German word that I had written down in my notebook: Lungenentzundnung. Then she almost laughed, but sent me onward. I told the doctor about the cough. I got the same look. I told him about the pneumonia, and he smiled: Ah, another American hypochondriac. "Surely it's just the flu," he said. Then I told him about the tinfoil sound in my lungs, and about the color of the stuff that was coming out of them with each cough. His eyes got big. He took my blood**, my urine, and an X-Ray of my chest.

One universal trait of health care everywhere is the waiting. I waited, and waited, and tried to study some German, and doodled some weird, disease-addled stuff. And then I waited some more. Wendy and the kids went out for lunch and visited the Brandenburg Gate. I sat in das Krankenhaus, listening to weird beeping sounds coming from the patient beside me, and a coughing that sounded like vomiting coming from the next room. Finally, the doctor returned.

"Okay, Mr. Thompson...," he began. But before he could give me the diagnosis, someone down the hall screamed. The doctor ran out. There were yells, an alarm went off, another skerfluffle, and the sounds of footsteps running urgently down the hall. Apparently someone got badly hurt; one of the people passing said something about "in der Augen," or "in the eye." Ouch. So, anyway, the doctor finally returned. And he calmly told me I had pneumonia. He said outpatient treatment was possible, but that I could have some kind of antibiotic-resistant strain that I picked up in a hospital or something, so I should probably be admitted. I explained that I hadn't been in a hospital in years. I didn't explain the flawed logic of staying in a hospital in order to treat something that can only be caught in hospitals. I also didn't explain that I couldn't really afford to stay in the hospital. I just told him, No thanks.

He sent me back to the Apotheke instead, where, after a bit of a runaround dealing with regulations (I'll try to explain the German attitude toward rules in another post), I was issued the most potent cocktail of antibiotics I've ever experienced. I've been on them for three days now, and they've purged everything in my body. Except the cough.

Now, I wait. And see if these Euro-antibiotics will win, or if the disease will. In the meantime, I've got another ordeal to face: German bureaucracy, which even Germans say is "rather unpleasant." Immigration, first, then the "Job Center."

* This would be a good place to insert the joke about how I got home and opened up the box and found a bunch of blue pills with "V"s on them, thanks to my bad German skills. But that's too obvious, and besides, I think I got the right stuff.

**Have I ever mentioned how much I hate hospitals, needles, etc.? I gave blood once, though. I was a strapping young high schooler, and my girlfriend persuaded me to do a good deed. So I went to the classroom where the blood drive was happening late in the day -- I was the last to get poked and sucked dry. When I came to, the blood people were all gone, replaced by the school baton twirling troupe or something, dancing and yelling and throwing things in the air. The blood folks had packed up and left, leaving me a half-eaten cookie and a paper cup full of Coke which, in my dizziness, I spilled.

Das Hund: Princess comes to Germany

 
Now, I will tell you about the dog. Das Hund, as they say in Germany. Her name is Princess, which is both appropriate and just plain wrong. Yes, she demands the pampering of royalty. But just try screaming "PRINCESS! STOP! NO! DON'T KILL IT!" when she's trying to rip the throat out of a rottweiler that is six times her weight. It just doesn't sound right.

It's not our fault, though. Princess, who is reputedly some mix of lahpso apso, pit bull and boxer, already had her name when we got her four years ago. Changing it to something appropriate (Rex? Butch? The Jackal?), might just confuse her even more. So I prefer to call her Das Hund.

When we decided to come to Germany, we might have also decided to do something reasonable to offset that decision, like leave all of our animals with good homes in the United States. That's what we did with Cleo, one of our cats, who is sweet and cute and fat and clumsy. That's what we did with Lucee, the elder cat, whom Wendy and I got back when we first got together. Lucee is a long-haired beauty who lures people in to stroke her. Then, in a stinging blur, she slices into the unsuspecting person's hand with surgical precision, leaving a series of parallel lines of scarlet along aforesaid person's flesh, which would be beautiful if it didn't hurt so much. We also gave Plato to a new home. Plato is a cockatiel with a rabid hunger for human affection. He flies around the house freely most of the time -- leave him in his cage for more than an hour and he utters a horrific squawking and violently attacks his wooden toy -- and seeks out the tops of heads or shoulders on which to perch. He is drawn to those who are not so comfortable with having birds crawl on them, or having same bird walk around the dinner table, eating off of everyone's plates. Once he finds a desirable human perch, he actually snuggles with the victim. No, "bird" and "snuggle" should not appear in the same sentence. And yet. The lovefest lasts until the victim decides to stand up, or take a bite of dinner, and then Plato attacks. He usually aims for the earlobe, or the back of the neck, using his needlelike claws to get a purchase on that part of the back that is impossible to reach, causing victim to jump up from chair, spill his pasta all over the table, and futilely try to stop his attacker. I'm Plato's favorite victim.

Even the cats could not intimidate Plato. Lucee was actually terrified of the thing. Cleo eyed him hungrily sometimes, but nothing ever came of it. Das Hund, er, Princess just wanted to play with the bird: It was her life's mission to just lick him just once or twice. In many a failed attempt to accomplish that goal, she chased after Plato as he flew around at human eye level, jumping several feet into the air to try to catch him, and then landing roughly, her unclipped claws gouging the soft wood floor. Our otherwise pristine and beautiful house is on the market, and we still haven't figured out exactly how to explain the floors to a potential buyer. Easier just to offer a few thousand off the price so they can get them redone, no questions, please.

So, yes, the animals were all a part of our family. And, yes, it was heartwrenching to leave them behind. But then, when you tear up the roots, move across oceans and time zones, without jobs or knowing the language, you have to forsake some things: Like the last shreds of your sanity, good jobs, loving friends and family, a paycheck, any sense of security or stability and possibly even your identity. So saying goodbye to the animals was just part of the package.

Except when it came to Princess, of course.

Wendy would simply not leave her behind. I suppose I could have stood up to her and asserted my masculine right to make family decisions. But Wendy, you have to understand, is German -- think Panzer tank and Blitzkrieg -- and also Jewish (I won't bore you with a list of those inherent character traits). It so happens that I'm also German (and it turns out I'm also Jewish, which I discovered when a cousin did a DNA test and found out that he had the Ashkenazi gene strongly up our shared matrilinial line). Yet something else in my confused genetic mix offset the Panzer/blitzkrieg gene and replaced it with something a bit more, well, Volkswagen beetle-like. Which is why Wendy, who can't speak even one word in German, gets along better in this country than I do, despite my four years of high school Deutsch, which have turned out to be utterly useless. When I heard the Panzer rev its engines, I wisely stepped out of the way.

And so it was, that when we flew off to Germany, Princess was left behind. For a day. You see, she's just a few pounds too heavy to fly in the plane's cabin as a carry-on (and besides, she'd be less likely than Osama bin, himself, to make it past security), and British Airways doesn't carry dogs as luggage during the summer so as not to end up with a cargo hold full of roast canine. So we had to fly her on a separate airline, which, in case you're wondering, cost more than it did to fly each of us human beings here. Add to that the hundreds of dollars we had to spend to get all the veterinary checks and certificates and microchip implanted and to treat post-flight trauma, not to mention the thousands of dollars we'll have to discount our house to make up for the mangled floor, and Princess is turning out to cost as much as your average, well, princess.

Which is probably part of the reason Wendy couldn't sleep for the forty-eight hour stretch between when we boarded the plane in Denver and when Princess landed the morning after we arrived. While the girls still slept, Wendy took the bus to the airport. She returned nearly four hours later with a bloody, shell-shocked dog, wearing a stench that can't really be described here, and looking a bit harried, to say the least. Princess had survived the flight, but only barely; her condition involved relentless defecation and blood. Enough said.

The vet was mercifully just a few blocks away, and he actually spoke English, and was quite friendly as he probed and poked Princess. That didn't ease the feeling that I get when I go to doctor's offices, though. One of the nice things about having kids is that you can pretend to be comforting them when, in fact, you're the one about to either pass out or puke or both on the veterinarian's exam room floor. I gripped my daughter, Elena, and rubbed her head; I don't think anyone, least of all the squirming-to-escape-my-grasp-Elena, was fooled. The vet's assistant eyed me worriedly, but didn't say anything thanks to the language barrier.

Ultimately, we all made it through. Princess just had a bad case of nerves, which is exactly the same thing that happens to me when I fly, only I can stanch some of the nasty symptoms by self-medicating (British Airways is pretty liberal with the free booze, even in coach!). We left the Vet -- Tierarzt in German -- and headed out into the soft light of late afternoon. People were out and ambling on the streets, drinking beer in sidewalk cafes. Many a German Hund loitered unleashed on the streets. Princess's tail perked up, though she was clearly still miffed at us for not putting her in First Class where she belongs. As we passed one big dog, a retriever of some sort, I felt that familiar tug of the leash, there was the old snarl, and my arm was nearly pulled from the socket. That's when I knew Princess would be just fine.

That's a good thing, because I've got other things to worry about: Wendy has been researching ways to bring birds to Germany.

Last impressions, first impressions.

My family and I moved yesterday. After spending my entire life in the American West, living the whole time in an area with a radius of about 200 miles in Colorado and New Mexico, I now live in Berlin, Germany.

We don't have jobs. We don't speak the language. We don't have a trust fund. We are here, in large part, because Wendy, my wife, and Elena and Lydia, our daughters, are German citizens, though this is the first time they've ever been to Germany. Long story (I'll fill you in later).

Two days ago now, in the space/time warp that occurs when one travels by jet over oceans and through time zones, we left our friends' house in Boulder and drove our overloaded car down the freeway to the Denver airport. My final impression of America was not necessarily of the airport, because an airport is not really of a country, but of the predominant view from the toll road which skirts Denver's suburban edge. There was the odd view of hundreds of houses, each almost identical to the one next to it, sprouting from the rolling, grassy hills as if they were geometrically-correct weeds. It was an appropriate last impression, I think.

Just a day earlier, we went to the Boulder Apple store, which is located in one of those newfangled outdoor mall sorts of things meant to resemble a downtown, I guess. My daughter, Elena, looked around and insisted we had been to this mall before: She vividly remembered the same Apple Store, the Anthropologie, the Jamba Juice, the AT&T store. We hadn't been there before, though we had visited an identical mall in Tucson a year-and-a-half earlier. I tried to explain to Elena that there were probably many other malls just like that one all over the country. But for her, the whole idea was maddening. She couldn't get over the notion that she had been to THAT mall once before. America.

Americans are masters at obliteration of place -- I don't mean the literal destruction of a place, although there's also that, but the voiding of any sense of difference between one place and another. We find comfort in the fact that we can feel like we're in Boulder even when we're in Tucson; we like to know that McDonalds in Paris is just the same as the one in Grand Junction. The houses with which we cover the grasslands of Colorado are no different than those we assemble on the edges of Reno, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, Phoenix.

This happens all over, of course: I won't be surprised if I find the same mall here in Berlin. Yet the Americans certainly have perfected this art of erasure of place. After all, home delivery of the New York Times at our house in tiny Paonia, Colorado, was a piece of the same phenomenon, as is the tasty Nepalese restaurant in downtown Grand Junction. These are means of transcending the local. Also, efforts to preserve "place" can get all tied up with efforts to preserve culture, which in certain contexts can look a lot like xenophobia, chauvinism, racism, ultra-nationalism. Thank goodness the Germans didn't try to preserve their place by instituting a German-only law or something.

...

Flying into Germany, I noticed this: A huge flat green plain. It's carved up into fields, and villages. Interspersed here and there are thick, dark forests. The villages are all tidily contained, and don't sprawl out into surrounding fields. Giant wind turbines sit at many a town's edge. Unlike the Wyoming wind farms, these are more frequent, though they appear to each be of a smaller scale.

On the outskirts of Berlin, a huge forest. Lakes, rivers, canals. A barge hauling coal. A nuclear power plant.

Our apartment for the next five weeks has three rooms. High ceilings. White walls. A view onto a tree-lined street and an old building across the way with flower-filled balconies. It's not unlike neighborhoods in Paris. Except everyone is speaking German, which sounds nothing like French except that it, too, is quite foreign to my ears. But it's that very foreignness that ensures me I am in a place. A different place. Out of place. Now I must try to make this place mine. It is terrifying and exciting all at once.

Werner Herzog is a plastic bag

This is simply brilliant. It lasts 18 minutes, which seems long to you blogospheric twitterheads, I'm sure. But watch it all the way through. You'll thank me later.

How Not to Cook Stew

Foraging herbs and mushrooms and other stuff from the wilds for dinner is a great idea. Except when it's not, as a Maryland family found out the hard way. See, I subscribe to a tasty little electronic newsletter known as MMWR Weekly. That's short for the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (yes, there's a redundancy in there somewhere) from the Centers for Disease Control, and it's chock full of good stuff about diseases and death and other things to ponder when you're feeling a bit too happy. Last week had a great little nugget buried among HIV stats and the like: A full account of a family who accidentally prepared a jimsonweed stew. Then ate it.

For those of you not familiar with jimsoonweed, a.k.a. Sacred datura, it's a bushy plant, with dark green leaves and big, white, trumpet-shaped flowers. It grows in the desert, where it's sultry appearance seems wildly out of place. Georgia O'Keefe has a few famous paintings of datura. Adding to its allure is its danger: It's an hallucinogen, one of many written about by Carlos Castanada. And, as follows, it's also poisonous (kids looking for an easy trip sometimes brew a tea out of this stuff; it can take several days for the resulting visions to recede). So, you probably shouldn't make stew out of it lest this happen:

In the early morning hours of July 9, 2008, six adult family members were admitted to a hospital emergency department in Maryland with hallucinations, confusion, mydriasis, and tachycardia of approximately 3--4 hours duration.

Yikes.

The six affected persons came from one family and included three men and three women ranging in age from 38 to 80 years (median age: 42 years). All six shared a meal of homemade stew and bread at approximately 9:00 p.m. on July 8, 2008. No one else was at the home when the meal was eaten. Approximately 1 hour later, another relative arrived at the home and discovered the six affected family members laughing, confused, and complaining of hallucinations, dizziness, and thirst.

During the next 6 hours in the emergency department, the six patients continued to experience tachycardia, mydriasis, and altered mental status. One remained unconscious. The others demonstrated confusion, aggression, agitation, disorganized speech, incoherence, and hallucinations. All six were admitted to the hospital, five to the intensive-care unit. The unaffected relative reported to providers that pesticides had been sprayed on mint leaves that might have been incorporated into the stew.

Ahhh.... no. That's not it!

Over the course of their hospitalizations, the patients' signs and symptoms of anticholinergic toxicity fluctuated. In addition to tachycardia, mydriasis, and altered mental status, two patients experienced urinary retention, and one had a small pleural effusion identified by computed tomography scan (Table). The patients received supportive care, including cardiac monitoring and intravenous fluids. Four of six patients were administered lorazepam to control agitation. None were administered physostigmine. Their neurologic statuses improved during hospitalization and were normal by the time of discharge. Four were discharged on the third hospital day, one on the fourth hospital day, and one on the fifth hospital day, each with a final diagnosis of altered mental status secondary to food poisoning. The patient reported to have eaten the most stew was the slowest to recover and had the longest stay. All patients fully recovered.

And that's when they were able to remember what they ate: A stew with potatoes, garlic, onion, tomatoes, curry powder and the leaves from some plant out in the yard. Bingo.

Unchopping a Tree

Maya Lin's video on deforestation. Quite beautiful.

Maya Lin - Unchopping a Tree from What is Missing? Foundation on Vimeo.

To can or not to can

I hate this time of year. The leaves fall, and crackle under the feet like the bones of tiny children. And the light takes on certain harshness that reminds me that, even as I grow closer to death, I have gotten no closer to realizing my dreams.



Most of that is made tolerable with a healthy dose of self-medication. But there’s one autumnal rite that I can no longer obliviate with gin. Beginning in August, adherents of this practice descend on the U-Pick orchards like magpies on roadkill; and by September, this cult – yes, I think it can be called a cult – is fully engaged in a perverse ritual of self-flagellation involving steamy kitchens, boiling water, blistered fingers and sterile jars. Sometimes even death and disease.

Yes, it is the season of canning, when certain Caucasians of elevated socio-economic brackets come together and prostrate themselves on the altar of the root cellar, and “put up” the harvest. And then they talk about it.

Like any cult or religion, this one has its evangelists; and its guilt. “I put up 60 pounds of tomatoes this weekend,” one of the followers of the cult said the other day, her voice sticky with self-righteous, semi-competitive verve. “And today, as soon as I get home, ten bushels of pears await me.”

Seeking my own accomplishment, I imagined replying. “Well, I made it through 200 pages of Infinite Jest this weekend, and I think I finally understand the plot.” But I suppose that would only prompt a reply like, “Oh, Infinite Jest? Isn’t that an heirloom tomato?”

***

Last week, my wife Wendy, apparently feeling a bit inferior with all the canning chatter, and my mother, who since moving to Hotchkiss has joined the Locavore sect, spent a full day preserving tomatoes and salsa. This worries me. As I was growing up, my mother generally avoided the kitchen. When forced to cook, she relied upon Kraft dinners and frozen enchiladas in tinfoil platters. Wendy, meanwhile, is alarmingly blasé when it comes to foodborne illnesses, and has an inherent oblivion to “sell by” dates. I suspect that she figures if she poisons someone, she’ll never be expected to cook again, which is just fine by her. Still, possessed by some back-to-the-earth demon, they forged ahead into the battlefield of boiling water and sterile jars.

Wendy’s description of the ordeal was so awful that I was overcome with enough guilt to agree to partake in the next session. I wanted to educate myself first, though, and I soon discovered that there’s a plethora of literature on the subject. Indeed, there may be more people writing about canning than actually doing it. In addition to several books, the cybersphere has exploded with blogs extolling the virtues of “putting up”. One advocates a Canvolution; another goes so far as to compare canning to sex, which leads me to think that my sex life, which only occasionally involves boiling tomatoes and finger-scorching jars and food processors, needs some spicing up.

As I read, I try some of the salsa canned before. Not bad for salsa without lime, or salt, or a hint of chili pepper. Then I reach the scary chapter of the book, where I discover that canning is like sex; that is, it can lead to various forms of bacterial infection when done recklessly. Turns out, canned stuff is a leading cause of botulism – a nerve toxin that can paralyze and even kill you. Tomatoes are especially prone to the bacteria, and so, the book says, one should always add acid to them before putting them up.

As I take another bite of lime-free salsa, I feel my eyelids drooping, and I have a hard time moving my arm. And when I ask whether they boiled the jars for long enough, I must slur my words beyond recognition, for neither my mom nor Wendy seems to hear me.

“Couldn’t we just freeze these?” I ask, eying the pile of tomatoes that we’re about to can. I receive a caustic look in return; it’s just not the same. And besides, as the manifesto of canning explains: What if the power goes out? You see, no cult is complete without an apocalypse fantasy, and the canvolutionary’s vision of Armageddon is as frightening as any, with pesticides and disease; GMOs and Peak Oil; and deep-chest freezers without electricity regurgitating rotten produce. As with all good end-of-days scenarios, the canners’ version include those who will be saved – that is, people who have put up plenty of green beans and peaches; and the damned – who put up nothing, and now must spend eternity, or at least a few minutes a day, wandering the supermarket aisles to ensure sustenance. The Bible tells us that the Prince of Darkness will one day burn in the flames of Hell. In the canners’ version of the Rapture, the CEO of Monsanto will spend his eternity trying to eat his way out of a pit of the North Fork Valley’s excess zucchinis.

Okay, so forget about the freezer. We’ll can the salsa, already. I throw in as much bacteria-killing garlic, lime, and chili as I’m able. After the third burn blister erupts on my hand, I ask myself: Wasn’t technology intended to free us from such chores so that we could work less and spend more leisure time doing the things that make us human, like reading, doing art or watching reruns of Battlestar Galactica? Isn’t that why our grandparents gave up home-canning in the first place? Or was it just because canning sucks? After all, canned fruit isn’t even all that good – it’s basically a less tasty, slimier shadow of its original self. Not unlike Mickey Rourke.

Five hours after beginning, our canning ritual is complete. I must admit, the salsa looks beautiful in those jars. And it’s going to be tasty come mid-December. I get it. Okay? I get the canning thing. And to prove it, all of you canvolutionaries can come try some of the salsa I put up. Don’t worry. I sterilized those jars really well. At least I think I did.