Sick as!

Over the past week I have been sick. I won't bore you with my symptoms. Well not in regular font anyway. They’re in italics so you can skip them if you don't want to read it but it is part of the story so do try. High velocity sneezing . Full body coughing. High pressure system in my sinuses. Myalgia. Arthralgia. Headalgia.

I have not been keen on making a doctors appointment because the Dutch medical system is different from that which I am accustomed.  Let me refer to a medical website for expats living in The Hague (www.care4expats.nl). The Dutch health care system is “an evidence-based system... we are not inclined to hand out medications in the hope that they could possibly help... Medicines are not strewn about in the Netherlands to give the impression that the patient is receiving extra special care”. 

In the beginning I didn't want anyone to think I was someone full of my own self-importance seeking extra special care, so I avoided the doctor and went to one of the shampoo shops to see what I could see. A shampoo shop or drugstore (Drogisterij) is a shop that sells over-the-counter medicines, deodorant and shampoo. It’s not the same as a pharmacy as there are no prescription medications. For that you need to go to an Apotheek where there are pharmacists reluctantly dealing in prescription and non-prescription drugs and advice. The Apotheek is like a pharmacy but you can’t touch anything, you have to take a number and do as you’re told.

Surprisingly, a lovely woman working in the shampoo shop decided to help me (this never normally happens). She asked me questions about my symptoms (at this stage just a painful chest cough) and listened to the answers. Then she sold me a cough syrup that she said probably wouldn’t help much and told me that since I had asthma I should really go to the doctor.

But I’ve had asthma for like a hundred years so I decided to use the wait and see approach. Then I started to feel really crap, shivers and sweats and had a couple of nights of hardly sleeping, strained muscles from coughing, sneezing until tears were running down my face and my head felt like it was going to explode. When I did drift off to sleep I would wake up with my fingers in my mouth pulling my teeth to reduce the pressure in my skull from the sinus congestion.

After two nights of that, I didn’t feel like I could do another, so I rang for a doctors appointment on the Friday. The phone call to the reception ladies went like this:

Ring, ring.

Me: Hello, can I make an appointment with a doctor for today.

Lady 1:Date of birth? 

Me: I told her.

Lady 1: Name?

Me: Catherine.

Lady1:That’s right.

Me: I know.

Lady 1: I’ll put you through to someone with the agenda.

Ring, ring.

Me: Hello, can I make an appointment with the doctor today.

Lady 2: Groan. What’s it about?

Me: Well, I’m sick

Lady 2: Yes?

Me: Um I have a cough and a sinus infection or something.

Lady 2: Date of Birth?

Me: I told her again.

Lady 2: Name?

Me: Catherine.

Lady 2: I’ll put you in with Dr van X at 3. You have 10 minutes.

Why is it that symptoms seem to miraculously improve at the doctor’s appointment? It’s true that a lot of these respiratory ailments are worse at night when one is horizontal and cortisol levels are up or down or something.  But I always feel like a fraud going to the doctor saying “Well when I rang for the appointment my leg was broken and the bone was sticking out at a funny angle with blood all over it and flesh dropping off and now it’s not”. But this time I really felt I looked sick. I had watery red eyes with purple crepe paper circles of skin underneath them, a nasally voice (more than usual), persistent grizzly bear sounding coughing, a rather powerful sneeze, a slow gait and a depressed affect. People were avoiding me in the street. But it didn’t convince Dr van X.

At the consultation, in the examination room Dr van X took my temperature. Normal. Listened to my chest with a stethoscope. Nothing. Shone a torch at my tonsils and got me to say “Aaah”. Can’t see anything there. He grabbed his otoscope ready to peek into my ears. “This is you last chance” he said. I was sure he’d find something, my ears were itchy and scratchy. The ears might save me. But no.

Back in the consultation room, Dr van X sat at the big chair behind a big desk opposite my little stool. “You are showing no signs of a bacterial infection. I cannot give you antibiotics”.

“That’s OK,” I said “But my cough and my sinus pain is keeping me awake at night and my chest really hurts when I cough.”

“Your chest is hurting because you are coughing,” said Dr van X “You should try not to cough.”

Rightio. He was right. I should at least try not to cough.

“But I will give you some codeine and a nasal spray. Pick it up at the apotheek. If your symptoms get any worse over the weekend go straight to the emergency department”. So I should not hesitate in going to the hospital’s emergency room if my self inflicted symptoms (that are of dubious authenticity being devoid of any observable medical signs) get any worse. 

That night I hoped my symptoms did not worsen but I still found myself trying to extract my molars and my face just throbbed. The nasal spray wasn’t doing anything. However it was not an emergency so I took myself to the apotheek with the goal of swapping the nasal spray for a tablet or something that might possibly help.

The lady at the apotheek seemed to have some kind of nervous condition because she kept interrupting and giving answers to my questions before I had finished asking them. I showed her what my doctor had prescribed and ...“Steambath!” she replied before I had finished my sentence. I was going to tell her  that the nasal spray was not working and... “Steambath!” she butted in again. If she had let me finish I would have told her I had had my head over two litres of steaming chicken soup and 17 cups of hot lemon and honey tea in the past two days and... “There is nothing else. You have to use this and a steambath”  But I wanted to know if I could get anything like Sudafed, a tablet or ...“No there is nothing else”. Apparently there is only one drug available for nasal congestion in The Netherlands and it’s this nasal spray which doesn’t work. But maybe I could get something for the sinus pain that is keeping me awake at night, is there..? “There is nothing else we can give you”.They were onto my scheme to get some harder drugs and sent me away.

I felt like a drug addict trying to score. I knew the Netherlands did not have the original Sudafed containing pseudoephedrine on the market. I’d googled it. Pseudoephedrine, a nasal decongestant can of course be cooked into methamphetamine.  Despite it’s liberal drug policy pseudoephedrine is not for sale in Holland. However neither did they have the substitute decongestant phenylephrine which cannot be made into an illegal drug. On the other hand it would be quite legal if I decided to smoke some cannabis or try a hallucinogenic mushroom instead.

Thankfully, I think I am finally on the mend. But to avoid future suffering, please send drugs.