As I mentioned in my previous post, my hospital adventure day started at 3:30am, when I woke up with intense pressure and pain in my left ear. I also couldn't hear anything out of it. I wasn't about to go wandering the streets of Parma at 3:30 in the morning looking for a doctor, so put some drops in it and eventually managed to fall back asleep. When I woke up a few hours later, I went down and asked the lady at the front desk of the hotel about where to go for emergency services. She explained to me where the nearest hospital was and what to do when I got there, and I set off in that direction. After walking about a mile, I came upon Ospedale Maggiore. First, I had to go to Punto Bianco, where you see a doctor who assesses the situation and determines what's wrong. If he/she can't give you a quick fix, you are then sent over to the main hospital to see a specialist. I waited for a while before seeing the doctor. We couldn't understand each other that well, so she found a guy that spoke a little English to translate. She looked in my ears, and surprise!...my left ear looked bad, so she sent me over to an ear specialist in the main building.
I went over to the main hospital in search of the 6th floor. The building was very confusing. There were four different wings, and each had their own elevator. So after going up and down three of them, I finally found the right place! I waited about close to an hour (I guess some things are the same everywhere!) to see the doctor. She was cute, young, very friendly, and spoke a little English. There was also a nurse, Grace, there, and all I can say is Thank Goodness for Grace!! She spoke pretty decent English, and helped me communicate everything with the doctor. The doctor looked in my ears, nose, and throat, and then stuck some weird tube thing in my left ear. Omg...it was so painful, it felt like she was stabbing my eardrum with knives! Now, I was exhausted and had been holding back tears all morning, but this was too much, and the waterworks started! She stopped right away, and they were so nice to me and apologized for hurting me! And the end result? I definitely had a middle ear infection. Prognosis: Acute Otitis Media. The doctor wrote me four prescriptions: 1- amoxicillin (antibiotic); 2- ear drops (the same ones the pharmacist had given me); 3- nose drops; 4- a painkiller. The doctor said I should start feeling better in a few days and all better in a week. She also said I should see another doctor a week later after I finished my meds to make sure the infection was gone. Grace, bless her heart, wrote down all the medicine instructions in English for me. She was awesome! When we were all done, she even had another nurse take my payment down to the pay area to make it easier for me. Man, they were really nice to me there. I had heard good things about Italy's health care, but now I've experienced it first hand. Plus, the cost for my whole visit plus the medicine was around 65 euros, which is nothing compared to what I would have had to pay at home.
I went back to the hotel and was pretty much in for the rest of the afternoon and night. This whole thing made me rethink my plans about where to go and what to do with the rest of my time in Italy. I was originally going to make my way through southern France before heading to Barcelona, but at this point I was feeling like I should stay in Italy for another week so that I could monitor the infection and go to another doctor here and show him all the information this doctor wrote down, seeing as how it was all in Italian. I also decided to stay another night in Parma, so I could actually see the city, and not have my only memories of it be the hospital! I decided my next stops would be Milan, Genoa, and Torino before heading to Barcelona.
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