This is the last story I have for Paracetamolland,. As I said before, this blog is an experiment to see if expats really wanted to complain about their experiences with the health system in the Netherlands. Unfortunately I haven’t found more stories nor collaborators that can help me to continue posting stories.
So I guess it will stop here for now. It all depends on you.
As for me, it has been a nice experience but I must say I feel more comfortable writing in Spanish. As a Spanish native, writing in another language became complicated.
Thank you for reading and specially thanks to my friends for their support. If I come across another story, I will post it. Who knows when though…
For now, I leave you with the last story:
This time I didn’t have an interview and this time the story came from one of my friends. We were having a drink on a nice “plein” (square) with three of my friends. One of them, Roberto*, hadn’t heard about Paracetamolland until my other friends started to talk about it.
He immediately said: “I have a story for your blog”. Right there and then he started to share his story:
“I had a car accident in Portugal and they needed to put a metal pin on my wrist. As I had it for six weeks it got tight next to the bone. Since I was living in the Netherlands, at the time that it needed to be removed, I had to make an appointment with a Dutch doctor. When I got to the hospital (to have it removed), there was no doctor, just one nurse. She told me that she was going to pull out the metal pin. I asked her if I was going to get anesthesia but she said that it was not necessary. As one of the points from the metal pin was out of my skin, she got tweezers and started pulling out the metal pin. It was so painful that I was screaming in pain. As I was restless she called two other nurses to assist: one of them was holding me, another one was holding my arm, and the last one pulled out the metal pin. Throughout the whole procedure I was screaming in pain as it REALLY hurt so much. I’ve never felt so much pain in my life”.
At this point my friends and I were just imagining it and we laughed loudly. Roberto was not amused at our reaction:
“It’s not funny when you are in this situation! The nurse continued pulling the metal pin and I was screaming like a crazy animal! It hurt so much! Coincidentally, one of my close colleagues happened to be in the adjacent room for something else and he recognized my voice through the walls! He was feeling really sorry for me.”
I asked him how long did his suffering last and he said that it was for about an hour. At this point I felt bad about laughing about it:
“I have a trauma from it and I wish I had it done in Portugal instead of here. Few days later when I showed my wrist without the metal pin, I was told that my wrist was going to remain a little bit twisted for the rest of my life. As I was worried, I called the doctor in Portugal to confirm this and he said that it was not true. See how my arm is now? –he said this by showing his wrist to me in circular movements: “Like nothing ever happened!.”
* Roberto is a fictitious name
