56: Second day in Bilbao

I woke up and went down for breakfast. Then I called my parents in Germany from the card phone at the hostel. This was a telephone to which I could receive calls as well, so they called me back and we talked a long time on the lower rates.

I spent the rest of the morning in the nearby hospital waiting to have my knee looked at. My Dutch insurance card had worked its magic again, and I was not charged anything, and didn't even have to fill out any paperwork to speak of.

When the doctor finally had a look at me, he immediately sent me to X-ray. After waiting outside the X-ray room and then having the plates taken, I returned to the doctor. He said he couldn't see anything, but prescribed some pain medication and recommended that I rest for the remainder of the day.

"Pain medication" I thought as I walked out of there. I saw in my mind's eye how some tendon or cartilage in my knee was being torn to shreds over the next few days while I walked along blissfully drugged to feel no pain. I decided I would not take any painkillers.

The procedure had surprised me anyway. I know nothing about medicine, but it seemed to me that X-rays show you what's going on with the bone, and that a knee injury you sustain from walking would be more likely to be related to cartilage or ligaments or whatever. But an X-ray might show that too, for all I know. It seemed unlikely that someone who spent about a decade studying medicine would fail to have a grasp on what the most likely causes of knee pain on a long walk would be, and how to detect these.

I went to an internet cafe to catch up on my eMailing and blogging. I found an Aldi and did some grocery shopping. They even had pumpernickel, which I had not yet seen since coming to Spain.

The rest of the day was spent relaxing in the hostel. I did my laundry. I talked with an Argentine immigrant. I met more pilgrims: a Danish woman in the cafeteria, a French-Canadian guy in the laundry room. In the evening I saw the Austrian couple Helmut and Helga again.