Drets Humans! I guess I will have to learn a language I wasn’t planning to learn – they speak both spanish and catalan on this course! Great.. haha
Crec que puc!

My visit at the doctors office took 3 minutes and went down kind of like it does in Poland.

I sat down, the friendly female doctor asked me what was wrong, listened to my lungs, and took a quick look down my throat. Her conclusion was that I had a cold and that it wasn’t very bad. I said I felt much better now but that it had been coming and going the past two months and that it was much worse mornings and evenings. She said “aha..” and gave me three perscriptions for broad spectrum antibiotics, strong painkillers and eye drops. Just like that! Then she said, writing on her computer: “Oh, and you’re not allergic to anything, right?” I said: “Well actually I am to quite a lot of things..” And her response was “Aha, okay, so take this and if you don’t get better you come back! …NEXT PLEASE!”

It’s maybe better than in Sweden where you sometimes have to wait for two months to get an appointment with a doctor. And when you finally enter their office they speak to you very slowly and talk about feelings and then you get out of there with instructions to eat some paracetamol and stay in bed when you are actually falling apart. In Sweden antibiotics are something you might get just before dying or when having a very bad infection – if they believe you.

So, what’s better? Going fast and overmedicating the whole population or ineffectively treating adults like stupid puppies and waste tons of time and money while assuming that people ask for medication they don’t need – thus not providing it?

I’ll wait another day and if tomorrow morning is bad I might be following doctors orders.

The exhibition about Afghanistan in Casa Asia here in Barcelona is very powerful. It makes me want to grab my camera, start a project and catch a flight to somewhere around subsaharan Africa. I’m also hooked on the idea of spending some time in Beirut to finally learn arabic. There are so many things one thinks of doing, and then there are those other things one should focus more on, we’ll see what I decide. :)

I feel much better today, my mornings however are still horrible and my eyes look like those of a basset hounds so I decided to give this free European Union healthcare deal a try. I have an appointment with el doctor later today, we’ll see how that goes.

You can visit the exhibition with photos from Afghanistan until the 10th of April in Casa Asia, Av. Diagonal 373, Barcelona.

Yesterday I stayed at home because my health didn’t allow me to move out of the bed. I spent the day eating honey and paracetamol, feeling sorry about myself and working from home. Today the heat is on again and I’m going to work and four different meetings with three different purposes! I’m taking my pills with me, I’m still sick but I just can’t stay in bed another day. Wish me a good day, or at least a very efficient one! Sir, yes sir!