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Scene: A man, on the 7th morning after heart surgery, rests in bed. He is experiencing obvious pain and sadness. Beside him is his partner, caring for him.
“Are you thirsty?”
“Yes, very.”
“Then why didn’t you ask me to bring you something to drink?”
“I hate myself right now.”
“I don’t like to hear that!”
“Being weak and dependent is very hard for me.”
“But what if the situation was reversed? If I asked for water, what would you do?”
Man begins crying.
“I would bring you a river.”
“See?”
Relatedly, I was talking with a doctor at the German Heart Center this week about how good (well trained, compassionate) the individual doctors and nurses in the German healthcare sector are, but also how terrible all the bureaucracy is. She basically said: “Good people trapped in a bad system? That’s Germany…”
Also: almost all nurses were either Turkish-German or foreign (Swiss German to Brazilian to Ukrainian); head of physical therapy was a gay Italian who spoke German so badly we often used a mix of English and Italian; guy who pushed my wheelchair between parts of the hospital was from Ghana; doctor who did my exit paperwork was a Dos Santos from Argentina.
One question I carried away from this experience: have any of those “Ausländer Raus” AfD types ever been inside a German hospital?
Anyway, it was a minimally invasive repair of a congenital Mitral valve defect in an otherwise healthy body. I’ve known for decades that this would be required, but the risk calculations only flipped from “wait” to “go” this year.
My surgeon at the Deutsches Herzzentrum der Charité had done 1200+ of this exact procedure. All post-surgical imaging shows that they managed a perfect repair that should last the rest of my life.
Whatever complaints anyone has about modern medicine, that I was up and walking out of the hospital under my own power five days after heart surgery is basically a miracle.
@jack There aren't that many hospitals in rural Brandenburg, which is a whole different set of problems...
@jack back home, the joke is that the best way to find a good Macedonian doctor is via a short flight to Germany :) More than just a bit of truth in that one...
Hope the post-surgery recovery is going well!
@jack happy to hear you're alright, wishing a speedy recovery!
@szymon_k Dziękuję bardzo! 
@jack stressful, but very cool that such things are routinely possible - wishing you a swift recovery
@jack I'm so happy to hear this! Great that decades of caring for your body is paying dividends today. :)
@jack Glad to hear you’re on the up and up and that you’ve got folks around to tell you to take it easy!
@jack we live in the future
@jack glad to hear it, Jack, and thanks for sharing the personal reflections
@jack thank you for sharing this. My Mum needs a similar operation in the next few months, so this is pretty reassuring!
@benjohn My best wishes to your mother 
@jack Gute Besserung! Ich hoffe, dass ich dich bald wieder in Topform auf Strava finden werde (aber ich werde geduldig sein ;-) )
@stephanetavera Danke dir! Cela ne devrait prendre que 4 à 6 semaines 
@jack The xenophobe to the nurse: "the black guy there shall not dare to touch me"! "Don’t worry, the chief physician does not treat patients with statutory health insurance".
@jack
That's why the story about the Hospitals in #Sonneberg County, Thuringia is so interesting.
#AfD Landrat (head of county) complains about high wages of the doctors.
Who the hell from German origin goes there unless you pay loads of money. And foreigner just don't want or want even more money.