How I Saved a Man's Life...From Diarrhea

This actually occured on this past Tuesday, but I have been preoccupied the last couple of days. Nevertheless, I think it's a humorousfull story that is worth telling (those of my followers, which probably number in the teens by now, who consider yourselves a prude should stop reading now).

This last Tuesday was the first game for many teams in the Champions League. For those that have now idea what that is, it's a league of all of Europe's best soccer teams. Now, I don't consider myself a soccer fan (which I know is almost sacriledge here in Germany) but I thought it would be fun to go to a bar/restaurant and watch the game with some friends.

We get to the bar and took a booth in the back with a view of the big screen TV and ordered our food and drinks. There was also a small table for two right in front of our booth. We knew it would be a pain to get out and use the bathroom if someone were to sit at the table, but we decided the view of the TV was worth it. Sure enough, however, a man and his wife sit down in front of us and begin to eat and watch the game. It's a trap!!!!

But, about halfway into the game the man gets up and goes somewhere, presumably the bathroom. He's gone for quite some time, so his wife takes the liberty of ordering him another beer. Some more time passes by and one of my friends makes it out to the bathroom and back while the man is still missing. More time passes and, though I don't have to pee with any particular urgency, I decide I too should go to the bathroom before this guy comes back so that I can avoid having to squeeze around him.

This is where you should stop reading if you ignored my earlier warning.

I go down to the bathroom and find it to be empty except for a man sitting on the toilet with his pants down and door open. He's resting his head on his hands and appears to be drunk. I think to myself, "Really? Really, dude? You're passed out drunk at 9:30 already?" It's awkward enough to pee with someone going in the urinal next to you, but it's even creepier to have some drunk guy staring at you from behind with his pants down.

Nevertheless, I had finished my business and turned to go when I decided I should try asking the guy if he's ok. Just as I turn to ask him if he's all right, the man stirs and begins asking for help. I can now see that he's extremely pail and sweaty, not drunk, and he's telling me to go get his with upstairs. I now realize that this is the same man who sat down in front of my friends and I upstairs.

I couldn't understand his explanation of what was wrong with him (I still have a lot of German to learn, and medical prognoses are still years away) so I rush upstairs to get his wife. Not knowing what's actually wrong with the guy, I just tell his wife that he's on the toilet and needs help. She follows me back down to the bathroom and asks her husband what is wrong with him. He tells her, but I still can't understand what he says.

She leaves me with him to go get the bartender. Upon arrival, the first thing the bartender asks if if the man ate anything prepared by the restaurant. When he finds out the answer is yes, he assures the wife that everything was freshly prepared. He then goes to call for an ambulance. Meanwhile, I can hear the man on the toilet, umm, defecating. It was an extremely awkward scene: a man unable to control his bowels sitting in plain view on the toilet with his wife kneeling next to him in the men's bathroom while I stand behind them both.

To my relief the wife says I can go and that she will wait for the ambulance. When I go upstairs my friends ask what happened. I tell them everything I know, but also that I still don't know what was wrong with the guy. One of my friends suggests that the man might have been constipated, but I assured her that I could hear the man going to the bathroom just fine.

A while later the wife comes back upstairs to collect her things. However, she makes sure to first finish her drink and doesn't appear to be in any great hurry. We ask her if everything is going to be ok and she responds by saying her husband only had "Durchfall." Not knowing what Durchfall was we looked it up on my friend's smart phone. Turns out Durchfall is the German word for diarrhea.

Now, I know that little kids in Africa can die from diarrhea because they get dehydrated, but I have no idea how diarrhea can be so bad that it could bring a grown man to his knees in a matter of 20-30 minutes. Nevertheless, the guy was in terrible shape when I found him, and I suppose he could have eventually died, so I suppose you could say I saved his life.

That deserves a medal or something, right?

An Update (NOT a Downdate)

So far things in München are going well. I now have a German cell phone (still prepaid though, and still no T9 or whatever that evil finish-your-words program is called) and my first contact in the phone is a woman named Kukuly (Mainly because Katherine and Andy don't have working . Kukuly is from Machu Pichu Peru, we met her when she asked Katherine for directions while we were in the subway station. Once she realized we could speak English we struck up a conversation - we all were glad to meet someone who spoke English (though Kukuly would have been even more comfortable in Spanish) and we all are new to München. She is moving up from a small town near the border of Austria and as you, the reader, already know, Katherine, Andy and I have only been here since Tuesday.

Kukuly's main reason for moving to München was to find more people who speak English because she wants her daughter to be able to retain the English she has learned. Her daughter is young enough that she has picked up Spanish and German, without an accent in either language, but because no one speaks English in the small town where they were living she has begun to lose her English speaking ability.

The main reason why I mention Kukuly is because when we asked her why she was in Germany she said that she just wanted to give her daughter the chance to learn more languages and experience different cultures, thereby giving her more opportunity, and I think that is quite remarkable. We didn't have time to ask her some of the other questions we had (like where's the father/husband, how do you pay for all this moving around, and what kind of job do you have to support all the moving?), but the fact remains that this woman has moved all over the world just so her daughter can have a better shot in life. I don't think she would have had that kind of attitude had she been American because I think we Americans always assume that there is no better place than the good ol' U. S. of A. That might very well be true, but I think it's also safe to say Americans have a much narrower outlook on the world than people in other countries.

Ok, enough of the soap-box. We also visited the Allianz Arena today. All you soccer geeks will recognize that as the stadium where FC Bayern München plays it's home games. (Side note: the German First Lieutenant who is assisting us while we are here in München thinks that American Football is much more interesting than Futball/soccer/Fußball, so I don't want to hear anything about my disregard for most things soccer).

When I have more time (probably not until we get into Dresden next week) I will write more. But that wasprobably understood that I would write more when I have more time because, after all, who does things that they don't have time for?