“And I don’t need a note, or a signature, or a letter or something?” Never did someone communicate no, duh with solely their eyeballs as clearly as this kind man. “And I don’t have to pay anything?” He gently applied the final dressing before a proud smile crept up his face. “No. This is Italy!’’
I just knew there was no way I could stay in Italy for years on end without taking antibiotics at least once. They love the stuff over here. To make this prophecy a self-fulfilling one, I swiftly revised my life goals upon discovering an ingrown hair in my armpit. I would get rid of this innocuous anomaly, right this very Thursday afternoon.
Me, an adult: don’t pick at it, it will go away by itself.
Me, a scientist: don’t pick at it, microbes can be a real bitch, you know this.
Me, being me: I will pick at this until I hit bone.
And with the willpower of a thousand men and some creatively conceptualized surgical tools ’twas done in a jiffy.
Friday it started to get a little painful, a little bumpy, a little… inflamed, if you will. Did I have to hold my arm up in a weird angle at work all day because any regular pose was too sore? Maybe. But that was to be expected, and at this point, nothing that could offset the glorious feeling of exhuming a semi-foreign body from your actual body.
Saturday and Sunday it got gradually worse, as things generally do before they get better, or so I reasoned. Besides, I had bigger fish to fry, such as meeting up with non-English speaking strangers from Facebook Marketplace without getting scammed. Ultimately, the only oddities of these exchanges were 1) me pretending that wearing a sweater in 100 degree weather (to hide my handiwork) was perfectly normal, and 2) me trying hopelessly to find a stance that was both pain free and not overly quirky.
Monday and Tuesday it got worse still, but as an medically untrained professional I felt the trajectory of things was within the realms of normalcy. It was taking a bit longer than usual to be on the mend, sure, and yeah, I was taking painkillers continuously. I wasn’t actively dying, so all was well, clearly.
But when I showed a colleague in the bathroom at work her eyes widened and she put a hand over her mouth as she gasped audibly. The next day I made the mistake of informing my hypochondriac boss. Ever helpful, we had some back-and-forth on how to proceed, because through an unfortunate series of events I was uninsured and without a GP. The steady gathering of more and more colleagues finally cumulated in a full-blown intervention strongly advising forcing me to go to the Pronto Soccorso (the Emergency Room).1
They agreed: it should be free, the Pronto Soccorso is always free, this is Italy, here first aid is always free. I was doubtful, because after all, I’m not Italian - I’m paying Italian taxes dutifully but I’d failed to renew my Italian healthcare registration. The plan was to only bring my work badge and no other documents and see if they’d still administer me. We help anyone at first aid, it will be free, goddamnit, everybody nodded, trying not to beam with nationalistic pride.
They took me in, despite immediately retrieving my expired healthcare registration from their systems using just the misspelled names on my work badge. At triage, I asked again, and they ensured it would be free based on the severity score they just gave me (not quite dying but suffering - moderate urgency). After a brief wait I was called, or at least some fumbled version of my surname was, and they promptly numbed, incised, drained, flushed, and bandaged me.
It hurt like absolute hell.2 It is my personal choice to interpret the doctor’s comment to “Stop it”, while I was whimpering incessantly through tears, to be a poor translation of something along the lines of “Don’t worry, sweet child, I’m all done now. You are safe and loved”. But overall, I couldn’t complain. Plus, I had done this to myself, so I really shouldn’t complain.
Turns out, it wasn’t free. But free enough. Though the brutal procedure of draining a freshly incised infection made me feel like it was all very severe indeed, my severity score was downgraded to the lowest one - the only one that brings with it the humble cost of €25.
The prescribed antibiotics would’ve been free if I hadn’t let my healthcare expire. Still, I have to come back every few days to get the dressing changed, and all of that is free. You just show up to the surgery wing, point at your bandages helplessly, and they will take you in. Without questions or letters or signatures.
So, if you are ever in Italy and have a medical emergency that’s slightly more severe than just being an idiot who picked at their skin, you will be helped at the Pronto Soccorso. For free. Anyone. This is Italy, dammit.
This is not as drastic as it may seem: I work at a hospital and the entrance is literally around the corner of my office.
The lidocaine didn’t seem work at all and I was in such disbelief of its inefficacy that I googled it while still weeping in agony - turns out, lidocaine doesn’t work very well in infected tissues. Be warned.
God, but picking at things feels so GOOD. Glad this had a happy if painful ending!
Picking at things I should leave well alone including hair, nails, broken skin, edges of teeth, lips, etc has single handedly kept me entertained, stressed, hurt and broken all these years. I think its in the inherent nature of mine to fidget constantly. If I had put all of that dexterous attention elsewhere I would have been a billionaire by now....or a lunatic. Glad you got Soccorso-ed Pronto.