El Peregringo

As I mentioned in my post about pillow cases, I was just very sick. Very sick. I spiked a fever of 39,6° C the second day I suffered from the flu. (How international of me to use centigrade there, eh? OK, so I can’t figure out centigrade either. Kilometers. No problem. Kilos, no problem. Centigrade–way too freakin’ complicated for me to convert in my head. 39,6 is 103.2° F. WAY to high for an old guy like me…)

So, I’m talking sick. Stomach flu..diarrhea, vomiting, fever, severe muscle pain. I lost 10 pounds in 4 days. Ana came down with the flu 2 days after I did, and the girls a couple of days later. We had to call in emergency family help–there was simply no way that my in-laws could have taken care of all of us. I missed two weeks of work, the girls two weeks of school.

Anyway, here I am, a peregringo who has recently received his official permanent resident ID card and a social security number, but I did not have my health care card. My wife took me to the emergency health care center just before she got sick too. So here’s the conversation (translated from Spanish):

Me: Hi, I’m very sick and need to see a doctor.
Receptionist: OK, I’ll need to see your health care card.
Me: I don’t have one. I just recently got my residency.
Receptionist: Oh, well you really need to have a health care card before we can see you.
Me: I know, but I’m really sick.
Receptionist: No problem. OK, do you have any ID?
Me: Here’s my NIE (national identification card).
Receptionist: Ok Mr. Dean. Go right on up stairs and they’ll see you in a few minutes. (My ID card shows my full middle name, which to virtually everyone in the hispanic world looks like it should be my first last name (your father’s first last name) and that “Herren” is my second last name (your mother’s first last name).

Fifteen minutes I’m being examined by a doctor, 10 minutes later I’m getting x-rays, prescription written a few minutes later after a second consultation with the doctor (the x-rays and the radiologist’s comments were sent via email to the doctor in the same building).

Off to the pharmacy, where my 10 day run of medications costs me less than 5 bucks.

Now I wish I could say that that was the happy ending. Unfortunately, I somehow contracted bronchitis on top of the flu, so I’m back at the local medical center (the State has medical centers in all towns and in cities like Pamplona, in all the major neighborhoods). So off we go to the local medical center where they ask me which of the doctors there I would like to see (Oh, I forgot that we had to repeat much of the above conversation because I still don’t have my health care card, but universally they tell me, “oh well, we’ll take care of you anyway.”). I’ve now seen my selected physician 3 times, been written several prescriptions, and I’m on the mend. I’ve never had to wait in long lines. I’ve never been treated any differently than any other patient.

It’s not fair to compare the Spanish health care system with the health care we receive from our family physician back in Middlebury. Diana Barnard is simply the most caring, thorough, lovely human being you could ask for in a physician. She very clearly adopts a holistic approach and understands that health care involves the whole patient, not just the illness in question. I’ve never been happier with health care than we are with Diana and the Middlebury Family Health Care facility.

Having said that, the US could take some lessons from Spain. They saw me, a non-citizen without all my paperwork in place. They treated me well and efficiently (nothing like the way Diana does, but well nonetheless). And guess what? It was all FREE. I paid nothing except for my prescriptions. Due to the fact I have a part-time job here and a social security number, Ana and the girls are also eligible for completely free health care. This is in spite of the fact that Spain spends less than one third per-capita on health care ($1,853 per person) than what the US does ($5,711 per person according to a 2006 United Nations report).

If only there were some happy medium (but only if we get to keep Diana…)

OK, so hate is a pretty harsh term, but as a single word antonym to love, it works pretty well. I mean does anyone really love chocolate, want to marry it and have it’s babies? So for the category, hate is a convenient term. Real hate I reserve for the truly hateful, like Bill Gates, Microsoft, and George Bush.

I hate the pillow cases here. Everyone knows what a pillow case is. It’s a bag that you stick your pillow in. Of course the thing that makes a bag work is that it has an opening, and a bottom. I mean, come on, you go to the grocery store and they ask you “paper or plastic” and you don’t have to wonder if they mean “bag” or like the Spaniards, if they might just mean tube.

Spanish pillow cases are tubes. You buy pillow cases and they’re open on both ends. This is quite frankly, stupid. Do you know how much muscle memory there is in holding the pillow with your chin while dropping it into the pillow case? Here, they just drop right on your feet, and you’re left holding the bag, er, tube.

Many Spaniards have seen the folly of the system and when they buy pillow cases, the first thing they do when they get them home is sew up one end… they way they should have been sold in the first place. It might be a conspiracy. Some homes keep a sewing machine just so they can turn what they just bought into something actually functional. Others buy their pillow cases and stop at a tailor to have them sewn up there. More research needed here…

So the pillow cases are bad, but my god, the sheet fiasco here is beyond comprehension. I’ve just spent 4 full days in bed with the worst flu I’ve ever had. I nearly died. Not because of the flu, because of the friggin’ sheets here. For some absolutely incomprehensible reason, when one makes a bed here, they leave something between 3 and 4 FEET of extra sheet at the top that gets folded down over the blankets. Sure looks pretty, but have anything approaching disturbed, feverish sleep, and you’re bound to end up with those 4 extra feet of sheet wrapped around neck and struggling to breath. Somehow this is considered “normal.”

I’ve heard several other ex-pats mention this, which makes sense since I know of no other culture that routinely tries to strangle foreigners in their sleep (more on Spanish xenophobia later). But I have never heard a Spaniard complain when in the the US that they really miss those extra yards of superfluous fabric, though I have to say my wife, if left to her own devices, will gradually lengthen the amount of top sheet until I beg for a reprieve (maybe she’s trying to get rid of me?)

My friend Bill Bumgarner, aka, Dr. Bill for his Doctorate in Tequila, is off to Guadalajara to keep his knowledge fresh… So far he’s only got day 1 online, but I look forward to reading the rest of his report. My family spent the summer in Guadalajara and I spent a great deal of it enjoying the fruit of the blue agave…

Boy I sure wish I were there with him… The weather has finally turned colder in Spain, and it’s become the same old gray I remember from all the winter holidays I’ve spent here…