This is what heaven must be like: shower heads with 7 (seven!) different settings, for less than 13 euro. Just imagine it: you’re getting up in the morning, it’s around 7.20, the door bell just rang 5 minutes ago, the Rauchmelderwartungsdienstgenossenschaftskontrolleur already checked the smoke
Which of the seven ‘Strahle’ would you choose at 7am?
alarms so you can feel safe again, and now you step into the shower. But – which of the 7 possible settings are you going to choose? Normalstrahl, Massagestrahl, Softstrahl, Saunastrahl, Normal- und Massagestrahl, Normal- und Softstrahl, or Normal- und Sanastrahl? Since there are seven possibilities, would you go for one “Strahl” a day? Normalstrahl on Mondays, Massagestrahl on Tuesdays etc.? But what if, on a Tuesday, you’d felt like having a Softstrahl? Would you stick with your original plan, or would you just pick the Strahl no matter what day of the week it was? Maybe, you would not bother changing the Strahl at all? Ever? Just choose the one you like best, and stick with it? But, then you should probably not have bothered at all getting this Multifunktions-Duschkopf at all? I can tell you, even being (half) German, life in Germany is complex. Having a shower in the morning is just the beginning of an endless array of options, choices, decisions, etc. By the way, having a shower before 6:30 is NOT a choice: it’s not allowed by the Hausordnung!
Every evening, I am sitting here and write. I have met a lot of the people I imagine are reading this, most of them I only really met since the end of June of last year, very brief encounters in Iona Rd not counting. It’s a bit like a public diary. It’s supposed to describe a journey, from the acute hospital to early neuro rehab. The thing is: this journey is so painfully slow, that I sometimes feel like going round’n-round’n-round… in a circle. Not even going, not even a circle, just getting stuck. Of course, in the grand scheme of things, that is not the case. Even with the operations over the New Year, Pádraig has made progress. But because it’s mostly happening in very small steps, it’s sometimes barely notable.
The posters are back up!
Today, Pádraig was almost sitting up with his bed. They had put him on a little bit of oxygen (but no machine), and he is still on an antibiotic. We played around with his TV sets (he has two in his room!) and are going to try and connect a laptop, internet, and Irish TV to it tomorrow. (Yes – we will have to check any device we’er going to use first with the Medizinisch-Technischer Geräteprüfungsdienst just to make sure it’s up to spec and won’t cause a short in the hospital’s electrical circuits! We have been told that this is just routine and really uncomplicated.) He is looking fine, opening his eyes, and reacting (still in a quite limited way). Tomorrow, we’ll have a meeting with the consultant to find out what the plan is for the coming weeks.
Someone not too long ago told me that this is a marathon, not a sprint. Looks like it’s a marathon that I just about manage to run: painfully slow.
Check out the article in this week’s Irish Times Health Supplement on Pádraig.
Irish Times Health Supplement (Wed, Jan 22, 2014, 09:00)
Today’s German Music Tip
Franz Josef Degenhardt, Befragung eines Kriegsdienstverweigerers (1965) – “Dies ist die Befragung eines Kriegsdienstverweigerer durch den liberalen und zuvorkommenden Kammervorsitzenden.” Most people who listende to this song thought it was a parody of the hilarious process conscientious objectors had to go through in up until Germany scrapped the draft. My jaws fell down to my knees when the “Kammervorsitzender” really asked me these questions, and with a straight face! Degenhardt was a cousin of the archbishop of Paderborn (my dioceses when I grew up), and lived just outside of Hamburg in Quickborn until his death in 2011.
What’s hot
Beds like armchairs
What’s cold
Choice
The German word/phrase/verse of the day
Kammervorsitzender
Twitter: @forPadraig
#caringforPadraig
http://www.caringforPadraig.org
Upcoming events: http://www.caringforPadraig.org/events
Hospi-Tales 
Great to hear he is back in the Klinik where the rooms are so nice and the staff so caring. The “diary-like” nature of your posts make the blog so enriching, full of observations and thoughts which not only reflect your day, but speak to a kind of collective consciousness … a sense that we are all in this together… which we are, to varying degrees. With you and behind you. Schalers abú!
The saying about ‘shared pain is half the pain’ is no longer just a saying as much as I’m concerned. Being able to share what is going on makes it so much easier to take without going insane, Andrew. And reading your comments gives us an extra boost!
Hello, Reinhard. We’ve had a lot of languages on the blog to date, but I don’t think we’ve had any Latin. The phrase that comes to mind for me is ‘sursum corda’. Easy for me to sit here and type those words, I know. It is indeed a painfully long and slow process, and perhaps this is all the more evident now that the goal of returning to the Schön-Klinik Eilbek has been achieved. I know you won’t mind a repetition of the fact that you have many friends with you in this ordeal. We would eliminate the ordeal altogether if we could. What we can do, and will do, is stay with you. With best wishes, Louise .
(PS to those of you too young to have done Latin – look it up!)
The Sursum Corda was the songbook of my dioceses in Germany (Paderborn) when I grew up, Louise. Notwithstanding this (and my nine years of Latin in school) I had to look it up, and found the answer: Gratias agamus.
Whatever about the shower settings, it’s so great to hear Padraig is back from that lung nightmare excursion to UKE. Not that UKE were responsible in any way for it: they were only there to help to the best of their ability; & fair play to them, they brought him through, despite the difficulties they & he experienced along the way: a white-water ride for one and all: he was nearly lost to us, but they brought him through. I hope they appreciate our – at least my – gratitude for their efforts, even after the set-backs…
That’s all history now, thanks be to God. It’s great (in my heart!) to hear he’s STRONG and sitting up!!! in bed; & to watch.. TV!! OMG! OMG!..OM.. Gee Whizz my Wiz! You gettin’ better!!? Sheeit, I gotta git ovah! Am savin’ up!
I don’t recognise the settings on my shower ‘cept the ones I use.
He does have a TV in the room, and we managed to switch it on, Pádraig was also sitting up – however, I wouldn’t quite go as far as saying, as much as I’d like to, that he is sitting up in bed watching TV. – You don’t know what you’re missing, just using the shower settings you’re using.