I hate being sick

... but at least the Austrian healthcare system makes it a little easier.

I woke up Tuesday morning to what I thought was just a little congestion. By the time I arrived at school and gathered my teaching materials, I felt as if a wave of exhaustion had hit me. I was not only congested, but also weak, dizzy, and a bit feverish; I knew I wouldn’t be able to go through with the day’s lessons. I went to find my main teacher, “Betreuungslehrerin”, to tell her I needed to cancel my lessons. She took one look at me and before I could even get the words out of my mouth, sent me “straight to bed”. I would have called out sick in the first place, if I felt as sick when I woke up that morning as I did when I arrived at school. I quickly found the other teachers with whom I had lessons that day and told them I was very sorry, I had to cancel the day’s lesson. They were all understanding and wished me a “gute Besserung”.

About half an hour later, I was back in my apartment and went straight to bed. I slept about 30 hours straight, only waking up a few times when the apartment was too warm or too cool. I slept off and on all day Wednesday and most of the day Thursday. Thursday afternoon I finally summoned enough energy to go to the doctor.

Since I don’t have a designated doctor, I turned to the city’s medical directory—an online database of all the doctors in Vienna. I searched to find which doctors in my district had office hours that afternoon and I chose the closest one. When I arrived at the office, there were four people ahead of me, none of whom had appointments. I waited 30 minutes for my turn, which is not long, considering the one doctor was running the entire office for the day without any secretarial staff. Even though I had never been to this doctor before, I didn’t have to fill out any medical paperwork. I simply told the doctor my address and handed her my ecard, which functions as the state insurance card in Austria.



She scanned the card and with the help of the embedded memory chip, was able to read all of my Austrian medical history (which is not much). She then asked me what was wrong, took my temperature, and took a look at my ears and throat. After ruling out any sort of infection, she gave me a prescription for a nasal decongestant, another prescription for an Austrian version of Tylenol (which you can’t buy over the counter), and an extra prescription for Penicillin, in case the congestion I have now were to develop into a full-blown infection.

I thanked the doctor, left the office, and went to the pharmacist (literally, the apothecary, or “Apotheke”). The pharmacist filled the prescriptions for the decongestant and pain reliever/fever reducer and I kept the extra prescription for the Penicillin. The two medicines together cost me 3 Euros (5 Dollars). Not bad.

After the pharmacy, I went back to my apartment and back to bed. Going to the doctor was tiring work! I slept for the rest of the day and most of the weekend, though I did do a little reading and research on Sunday.

Now as I write this entry a week later, I feel much better and am one Austrian experience wiser. It’s time to go out and enjoy the sunshine!