Here we go

I happened to mention to the anaesthetist yesterday that I had been grinding my teeth at night for the last few weeks but had no idea why. So it seems he ordered a double dose of "calming" pre-op tablets last night, commonly referred to here as "LMaA" pills. I won't ry translating but I did sleep very well.

Here the 8:30am view from the 3 man room I was in. Two very pleasant quiet cell mates and I suspect we sawed down about the same number of trees during the night but I didn't hear any of it. Given the minor nature of my small incision, I knew I would end up at the end of the days operation timetable. This is the part I hate most - being "Nil by Mouth" from midnight and then not being wheeled down to theatre until midday.. Hop on the table., mask over nose and mouth and wake up hours later back in the room. I don't even remember waking up in the post op "wake up" room. Evening "meal" was already at my bedside, so bolted the meagre ration down before going down to the car park and moving the car 10 metres so as I could park free for the next 24 hours.

Then back to sleep and attack the next forest.

For any who are interested. Memmingen hospital  has 500 beds, dealing annually with 22,000 in patients, 44,000 out patients, 1500 births and 5000 dialysis patients. Around 1000 employees. It's run and paid for by the city of Memmingen i.e. the mayor is the overall boss. They get reimbursed by the state and private insurance systems. It's also a "training hospital" for Munich's large university hospital. This set up is typical for Germany.

The hospital is constantly building new wards/departments but I only seem to end up in the original wards which are probably not up to modern standards - no electric beds or usable radio sytem. It is possible to have a TV installed on the wall opposite the beds so that all room mates are forced to watch/hear what the renter wants. If you get someone who switches it on at 7:00am and off at 22:00 and just watches soaps, then so do all. I always pray there isn't one in the room. There is an extra TV room for those who can get up.

German health system allows almost total freedom of choice - you can choose your GP on a daily basis, can go to as many as you want until you find the one who will agree with the diagnosis you made using Wikipedia. He might say you need to go to a specialist, writes a piece of paper and you can choose any one you like, anywhere in Germany. If he doesn't give the diagnosis/treatment you want you can go to another one and when you have one that says you need to go in to hospital, you can choose which one in Germany you want to use.

A big criticism of the German system is that there are too many hospital beds and overall too many doctors but shortages of specialists in certain disciplines. Since the system of operation based payment was introduced from the USA/UK, statistics show there has been a huge increase in operations and many are said to be unnecessary. Consultants are judged by the administrators on the number of operations as this is what brings in the money. Sign of the times I suppose.