The German Ambulance Debacle That Cost Me 820 EUR
I think I have a curse upon me.
It’s like I can’t go on vacation for 6 weeks and not get ill or injured. (Last year I worked in Finland for 6 weeks and got sick twice (!) in 1 month, though for very unavoidable reasons. Before that, I caught a cold in Italy that persisted until I got antibiotics.)
Granted, my “vacation” was actually 6 weeks of intensive dancing — i.e. professional development for me — so my risk of injury was higher than most. I accept it.
That’s why I bought travel medical insurance. Even then, how my trip ended was a rude awakening despite my best efforts at self care.
This summer I went to Berlin and Munich for 2 professional dance training festivals: b12 Festival for Contemporary Dance and Performance Art and Tanzwerkstatt Europa, respectively.
While b12 was freakin’ hard, and I got more black-and-blue bruises than I’ve ever gotten in my life, I miraculously didn’t end up seriously injured in the course of those 4 weeks. So it shocked me when I felt a distinct “pull” under my left scapula in repertoire class one day in Munich, a week later, when the classes at Tanzwerkstatt were much more easygoing compared to the physicality of b12’s.
Chalk it up to travel exhaustion, bad luck, magnesium deficiency, whatever.
I hoped the pain would settle on its own, so I didn’t make a fuss out of it — didn’t even mention it — until the pain became unbearable the next week. Turns out those ensuing nights of trying to dress myself and sleeping with a malfunctioning scapula were just a prelude to a worse pain to come.
