Today, I had to think about the media storm that broke loose and the solid intervention by Minister Dermot Ahern in 2007 when the then German Ambassador to Ireland, Christian Pauls, told a group of visiting German business men that Junior ministers here earned more than the German Chancellor; that our “chaotic” hospital waiting lists would not be tolerated anywhere else; and that doctors had rejected €200,000 a year posts on the basis that this sum was “Mickey Mouse” money. (He had compared that to the salary of just over 30,000 euro earned by his daughter, also a doctor and second in charge of a children’s hospital in the North of Germany, I believe.) The Department of Foreign Affairs felt his remarks could discourage investment here. At the time, it seemed to me that we had a sharing problem – but nobody cared, really.

The care Pádraig is getting here is really remarkable. The nurses and staff couldn’t be nicer to him and to us. The cleaner knocks on the door before she comes in to clean his room, his nurse (with a couple of big, beautiful tattoos on her arms:) tells him how sorry she is for having to introduce this tube into his throat to suction him, and today we were brought extra chairs, as well as coffee and tea to his bedside. The physios and doctors are working with him, but it’s clear that the journey from Ireland to Germany, as well as this new infection, are taking a lot out of him – which is why he has been on supported breathing a few times since we arrived.

Despite of these small temporary setbacks, I have not seen Pádraig as alert and ‘aufmerksam’ since the accident. His favourite nurse told us that she herself, the night nurses, and the physios had definitely noticed that Pádraig was, in his own small way for the time being, cooperating with them – moving his legs when being turned in the bed, opening his mouth for oral hygiene, and so on.

There is a real caring attitude here where staff on Pádraig’s ward share things around. This is only possible because there is a larger system that supports their work, a system supported right from the top, a system anchored in German society where caring means sharing, where, according to the German ‘Grundgesetz’ (or constitution), ‘Eigentum verpflichtet’ (with ownership comes responsibility) and ‘Sein Gebrauch soll zugleich dem Wohle der Allgemeinheit dienen’ (its uses should at the same time serve the common good).

So tonight, when we asked, we were very politely told that, of course, they would  pad the side railings of his bed, in case he would cough, bend up and then fall to one side against the railings.

Tomorrow, Maria will join us for a few days. We will also get a German car on loan that will allow us to be a bit more mobile and to move out of our current ho(s)tel accommodation (which we had found using the excellent German portal http://www.hrs.de – in case you are planning to come over for a visit).