nurse ratchett The German Nurse & Her Stuhlgang

In the past year, I have unfortunately found myself in the hospital, due to various ailments and this has given me an unique insight into the German medical system.   I will go into this a lot more in future posts because the health system here is, to put it politely, screwed up, and for a foreigner looking in, it is really surreal.

Last year, I had to go into hospital and the nurse in charge of my room was a bit of a battleaxe.  She spoke no English and in German, told my roommate that she didn’t much like foreigners.   I could overhear and even though my German is not the absolute greatest, I could still more or less understand the gist of what she was saying.  She probably thought that being the ignorant devious benefits-seeking, blood-sucking foreigner that I am, that I couldn’t understand her.  Well I love you too Nurse Von Ratchett.


Anyway, the ward had this waking ritual at 6.30am every morning (precisely at 6.30am – remember their obsession with things being in order?).   It was like a full frontal assault by special forces commandos.   At 6.30am on the dot, they would crash the door open, turn all the lights on, pull the blinds up and start shouting at everyone to wake up.   Now I don’t know about you but 6.30am is not exactly my prime moment of the day.  I am not exactly by the side of the bed as they come in, doing exercises, exclaiming “oh! Is it that time already?!”.   So when they come up to your bed with the blood pressure equipment, you are not exactly “all there”.

So on the first morning, Nurse Von Ratchett stands supervising the medical assistant who is taking my blood pressure.  Suddenly the assistant asks “stuhlgang?”

Now as I have already indicated, my German is not perfect.   I can do the basics and I can also muddle through a conversation (provided we are not talking about politics or religion).   I can also understand a lot more than I can speak.  When someone says something, I try to translate it in my head.   So when the assistant asked “stuhlgang?”, I figured that since “stuhl” was the German word for a chair, I figured she was asking me if I wanted to get up and sit in a chair.   Logical right?   So I said in German, pointing to the bed, “no stuhl thanks.  I want to stay in bed”.

This sent Von Ratchett into a fit.   She came up, pulled the bed blankets back and started frantically looking through the sheets.  At first I was a bit bemused but I soon got irritated as she was letting all the warmth out of the bed.   When she couldn’t find what she was looking for, she glared at me and suddenly she turned around and stomped out of the room.  I turned and looked at the medical assistant and at the roommate, who were both in stitches.  However, I couldn’t get them to explain what was going on.   It was apparently too good a joke to explain.

The next morning, the same ritual.   “Stuhlgang?”.  “No thanks I want to stay in bed”.  Cue Von Ratchett pulling all the sheets back, frantically looking, then glaring at me.   Cue the assistant and roommate laughing their heads off.

The next morning, the same thing.   By this point, I was starting to get REALLY hacked off about this.   I was probably muttering the word “stuhlgang” in my sleep (not that the roommate would have heard as his snoring was enough to wake the dead).   So I turned to the grinning roommate and demanded to know what “stuhlgang” was.

It turns out that “stuhlgang” is….well a stool, a number 2, faecal matter.   What the assistant wanted to know was whether I had been to the toilet for a number 2 during the night.   Me pointing at the bed made them believe that I had done the toilet in the bed instead.

The German language – sometimes it can be a real bitch.