maybe it is time to remind myself what I am doing these trips for – auto-ethnography with the world-at-heart is as good or as much of an explanation as I can give. When someone recently asked me I said it is about how culture changes and what it does to people (and vice versa).
Today, Maundy Thursday, I went into evangelical Wurttemberg by train and – maybe I needed reminding indeed – passed the locality of some publishers’ – with a billboard next to the train track: “Mach es wie Jesus, werde Mensch.”
Crikey, I wish, I had come up with that phrase.
I am almost certain, the evangelicals will have come up with a theological twist I would not be in agreement with, but the phrase as such is great, me thinks. Be like Jesus – human. Kick a few tables over, heal some sick and swear at the religious bigot types.
The Easter sermon out of the way, I can tell how my day went – I finally had the MRT, very quick job and uneventful. I just ticked the box ‘declined contrast’ and nobody even bothered asking why. I lay still for an enjoyable 10+ minutes, came out, put my jewelry back on (that would be my pedometer). – to be told by the assistant, I had a severe abscess in my cheek and it needed treating TODAY. I must have looked a bit puzzled – she added, well, treat it somehow, either open it up or give antibiotics. That said on Maunday Thu at 16:30 did not make it very likely either would be happening before next Tuesday.
After sitting myself down to do some serious work on my budget such as it is until April 30 (not much to write home about), I was a good girl and made an appointment for Tuesday with one of the leading GPs in town – only to be phoned by their admin a little later telling me I was not on their books, so I could not get one. Well, I did get one in the end when I explained that I was a stranded EC-citizen with what they considered a serious enough diagnosis. The rest of the diagnosis, by the way is hidden behind a QR code on the letter I was given. The specialist radiologist doc apparently does not even see mere mortals in clinic any more, just types up letters and leaves it to the assistant to summarise.
Well, I am not having a fever, there is nothing I CAN do today other than continue with Paracetamol. Dug up some Turmeric from my back pack and feasted on a teaspoonful of that with pepper and honey for effectiveness and taste. Unfortunately, the landlady who keeps the posh Italian restaurant downstairs was too busy to freeze my gel pack for me as I learned when I picked it up 2 hrs later. So tomorrow I shall go to the Italian takeaway round the corner, buy a meal I can afford, and ask whether they have a freezer I can use. Yes, this is the part of the country with Italian immigrants next to evangelicals.
Back to the doc’s verdict, as a researcher I am befuddled – such an urgent treatment advice and it does not even warrant seeing the patient? Mmh. This researcher may find herself writing a column for the local paper, as EC-citizen researcher, next week. Tomorrow shops are closed for Good Friday, so on Saturday I shall buy some cabbage and fashion myself a compress with a scarf (I am told it might help to draw out the abscess/infection).
And on Tuesday, I hope the GP in the 10 minutes I am granted, will tell me what happened to suspected cancer, oral thrush and periodontitis.
— image above is a painting by Otto Pankok who early last century took gypsies in Dusseldorf as his models for paintings,
Solitary 4 Tomorrow - in Dialogue 
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