Well we made it 6 months without having our first visit to the ER, I do say that’s a record for us 😉 We went to Trier Mutterhaus, which has a really long name: Klinikum Mutterhaus der Borromäweinnen, for our first ER experience. It’s about 34 mins away from Spangdahlem BUT is the hospital that has the dedicated pediatric ER. I’d much rather drive a little bit further for top quality pediatric care for my kids. There are some things you need to know before you go…the base really needs to give out more info than just the address/phone number to newcomers!
So I’m sure your thinking it was Boo who required this visit, but instead it was Bea. We had rented a bouncy house for our housewarming party and all went well. It was the next day when Mr. B & Bea were playing around that she decided to try to summersault over him, she went one way her neck went the other!
So she came in and we had her rest and after an hour she was still in quite a bit of pain, and did not have hardly any range of motion. I may not have been as concerned but since we know that Boo dislocated his C1 & C2 in his neck at this very age (and we didn’t know it!) I wanted to get her checked out.
We got her loaded up and I put Boo’s old C-collar on her for the ride to the hospital since the roads are bumpy and it was tiring for her to try and hold her neck still. I did not think she had dislocated her neck…please know if I thought that we would’ve called an ambulance, but I knew she’d tweaked it pretty good.
We grabbed the ‘blue book’ and put the address in the GPS since we’d never been there before. I had done my research prior to arriving at Spangdhalem and knew if something came up with the kids we’d go to Trier so that made choosing between the 3 hospitals easy.
As we start to get to the hospital we see signs for Mutterhaus parking and turned into the parking lot on the left hand side of the street. It was then we realized that we were going to need Euro to pay for parking! Mr. B had forgot to grab his bag of change and I only had a few coins in my purse. We did see that there is an ATM inside if needed, but more about paying later. You get a yellow token and you take it with you to see the Dr.
You can also ‘borrow’ what looks like industrial wheel chairs from the parking area to get people into the hospital. And by ‘borrow’ I mean putting an Euro or similar in like when getting a grocery cart at the local stores. This is a great idea, why don’t we have those in the US?
Then we had the challenge of actually finding the hospital entrance! You leave the parking lot at the far end from where you came in and turn left. We tried a door on the side, and nope, no luck. All the signs were in German so it wasn’t very helpful. We followed a German family and walked up the road and seen the main entrance on the right. Now we were in but where to go…
Once you enter there is an Information booth on the left and the lady told us how to get to the Pediatric area. It’s a good haul from the entrance so keep that in mind of your having to lug a sick child around. Luckily Bea was able to walk, slowly, but it was better than nothing.
If going to the Pediatric area you enter the main building and walk to the end, then take a left, walk down to the Kinderanmeldung sign and take a right. Walk down the hall and there will be a glass door on the left for the reception and a waiting room on the right side (It’s pictured in the first photo at the top of the post).
To check in you enter the glass door and see a receptionist to check in. They ask for your yellow token and ‘validate’ it so you now get to pay the 1/2 price rate when leaving. We arrived at 4:25 pm on a Sunday, we had to wait 7 minutes to check in and then it took Mr. B about 10 minutes to fill out the paperwork. As soon as he was done we were escorted to a room, not endless waiting it the waiting room like in the US.
After waiting 10 minutes a Dr. came into see us. He said he spoke a ‘little English’ but we found that he could easily understand and carry on a conversation with us so we did not worry about contacting a Patient Liaison Officer (PLO) at that time. However if we needed to we could’ve called (0651-94783355) and asked for one or even asked the Dr/nurses for one. After examining her, she was given some medication for the pain…Motrin, and we were sent to get an x-ray done, this was all within 15 minutes of the Dr. coming in, pretty speedy compared to our trips to the ER in the US.
Now this is unlike the US in that we were sent to take Bea to the x-ray department ourselves, we were given a map and pointed an a general direction and sent off. We were also given one of the wheel chairs to use so she didn’t have to walk. We managed to find it and there were several people in the waiting area. As we were waiting after a few mins the x-ray tech showed up from what seemed like her lunch break and people started getting x-rays done. After she showed up she called someone before us and then we were called next, we only waited 10 minutes.
Mr. B went back with Bea to get the x-rays, it only took 5 minutes and the Dr. read the results on the spot and told Mr. B and then called down to Pediatrics to talk to the Dr. Thankfully they were all clear.
We headed back down to the Pediatric unit, they did tell us to come back after we were done however they did not tell us we wouldn’t be in the same room, luckily when we entered a nurse seen us and put is in a different (and unoccupied) room. After 5 minutes the Dr. came in with a photocopy of the X-ray for us and confirmed again that it was normal. He said it was a whiplash like injury and they gave her a neck brace to wear for a few days. He also wanted to give us a prescription for Motrin but we declined because we have plenty at home, as do most Americans. Here in Germany you cannot buy Motrin or Tylenol from a pharmacy (stores don’t carry it either) without a prescription, kinda crazy huh?!
The Dr. wrote up a report on German, he said he wasn’t fluent enough to type it in English but could also produce a Spanish version, LOL! We left the hospital at 5:54 pm, so we were there for about 1.5 hours, one of the quickest ER visits we’ve ever made. As you walk out the hospital doors there is a box on the left to put in your token and pay for parking. Since our token was validated inside we only had to pay the 1/2 rate so we ended up paying €1, luckily I had a €1 coin in my purse. But from now on we need to keep some Euro change in the cars for situations like these!
We then took the report and turned into the Tricare office the next day AND called to notify her provider that we had been seen off base. You have to do that within 24 hours of being seen so you don’t get stuck paying for the bill. We got her bill the other day in the mail and it was a whooping €87 for the neck brace, so you don’t want to be stuck paying out of pocket.
Overall we had a good first experience here at the German ER, hopefully we won’t be checking it out again anytime soon! Also I’ll try to get more pictures soon and update the post, I just had my cell phone camera with me at the time.
Know Before You Go:
Where: Klinikum Mutterhause der Borromäerinnen in Trier, Germany
Address: Feldstrasse 16, 54290 Trier
Phone: 06519470, PLO: 0651-9478335
How To Get There: Approximately 34 minute drive from the Spangdahlem area.
What: German ER, has a dedicated Pediatric ER
Cost: Bring Euro to pay for parking and to ‘borrow’ a wheelchair to get inside if needed.
Wow that is so much better! you know you would have been waiting forever if that was an ER in the US. that’s why I like Urgent Care because I can be seen so much more quickly. Normally within 20 minutes not 2 hours……only to wait another 2 hours and maybe even the next day…….