Health

Thermal Baths

~ Kate Wilson ~ 1 Comment

I first heard about mineral bathes when I read Shirley MacLaine’s book Don’t Fall off the Mountain where she describes amazing experiences in the Peruvian Andes. Later I went travelling there and after walking the Inca Way to Machu Picchu our group was taken to a beautiful place called Aguas Calientes which I still dream about. It was a small outdoor pool with very basic changing facilities and a little bar selling beer. We went at night and bathed our walk weary bodies in the hot mineral waters while gazing up at the stars and mountain peaks all around us. It has become one of the places I travel to in my mind when I want to feel at peace.

Since then I have always felt drawn to places with natural hot springs. I felt very excited when I discovered that Catalunya has many towns and villages with balnearis – some are more basic and some are pure luxury. I wrote before about the Safareig in Caldes de Montbui and also about our visit to the Bains St Thomas in Catalunya Nord.

The idea of going to laze around in hot bathes on a regular basis could seem a bit self indulgent so I decided the best idea is to write about them, thus bringing in the justification of ‘work’ to my cunning plan to visit them all!

This week we went to La Garriga to see what happens in the Gran Hotel Balneario Blancafort.  It is a huge complex – a very up market hotel with the thermal mineral spa inside, gardens dotted with sculptures, a large indoor carpark and apartments for holiday rental. We rolled up in a tiny Peugot, carrying backpacks and looking not at all like the sort of people who would actually stay here. But everything from the first moment at reception was perfect and welcoming. You can have a two hour stay in the spa for 38euros and after showing us around they left us to relax in peace and do things in our own time. There are several large swimming pools, some with different temperatures, some with water jets for muscle massage. Saunas and hot humid rooms, showers with special sprays pointing at different parts of your body. A semicircular walkway where round pebbles massage your feet while hot jets of sulphur water pummel your legs. Places to relax – if you only had time!  And hot herbal drinks always available so you don’t dehydrate.

You can’t take photos inside the bathes so to see how it looks you need to take a look at the web site. The decoration was beautiful – whites, blues and greens, carefully placed plants and stones and interesting paintings and sculptures all around. There was no sense of rush or being monitored – if you needed help someone was there but for most of the time you were left to relax and enjoy.
Bliss!

Bains de St Thomas

~ Kate Wilson ~ 1 Comment

 

We went in the van to Catalunya Nord last week so called as it is widely seen as being a part of Catalunya although officially it is on the French side of the Pyrenees. Past clamp downs on the language mean that only the old and the young now speak Catalan there but it is now taught in schools. The highlight – for me – was our afternoon in the hot sulphur bathes of St Thomas. Being a great fan of indulgent lazing about I always head for these places if they are available and luckily for me there are lots of centres – Balnearis – to try out. Some are closer to home and I will write about them as I gradually work my way around them!Set in the mountains it is the perfect way to relax after a long walk up one of the highest mountains in the region – Canigó.

Health Care

~ Kate Wilson ~ 2 Comments

It’s almost a month since I last wrote a post here. What has been happening in this gap? I know with blogs that I read I start to wonder when there is a lengthy pause – where are they? have they stopped writing? are they alright?

Sometimes there are experiences that feel too complicated to describe – they don’t fit into a nice tidy box with photos and a title. This month has been like that.
We went back to the UK so that I could have a minor operation to remove a kidney stone. I would have preferred to have it done here but although I am entitled to emergency health care as a resident of the european community this does not give me the full benefits of CatSalud unless I am working here and paying social security. It is one of several bureaucratic problems that I have yet to resolve so that I can live here ‘properly’ rather than doing a balancing act between two countries.
All went well and we had a holiday in Cornwall while I recovered, returning to Granollers a full week after leaving hospital. Then, perhaps it was the journey, I started bleeding and rather heavily. I found myself in the situation I had dreaded, with no hospital notes to show doctors here, no familiar general practitioner to consult, not much energy to deal with anything and no idea if it was serious or not. On the positive side I had someone wonderful to support and take care of me while doing all the talking in Catalan and a very kind and helpful family network close by.
I have now had a lightning tour of the Catalan health service and know a bit more about how it all works. In the past I have made great use of farmacias – like our chemists but with some differences, one of which I have often been grateful for is that they will dispense some drugs without the need for a doctors prescription. I know this sounds not such a great idea but if you know what you need and use the service responsibily it can save time and energy and be very useful.
For a day or so I drank loads of water and rested as recommended by the telephone advice service. Then we went to a Centre of Urgencias. These small clinics deal with fairly straightforward minor but urgent problems. I used one in Barcelona once and found it very helpful and easier than going to a general practitioner clinic. We were seen quickly, they did a urine test, diagnosed ‘too much blood’ (rather obvious without having to use a dip stick), and sent me to the A&E department of the local hospital for an ultrasound. Everyone had warned me that there would be a long wait here and we went prepared with books and bottled water. But I had no idea that this long wait meant we would arrive at 5.30 pm and not leave till 2am.
I was lulled into a false sense of security when we were seen quickly by a nurse and she took yet another urine sample and fixed a plastic name tag around my wrist. But I clearly had not appeared sufficiently poorly and she must have given me a low ranking as we then spent many hours sitting in poorly designed plastic chairs trying not to breathe too deeply the same air as the lady with the acute respiratory infection a few seats along. She wasn’t a patient but a family member or a friend of a friend who had come along to enjoy the social life of the waiting room. People did what I have been noticing them doing here since I arrived in Catalunya – they waited without complaint or murmur. British people are known for queuing but I think Catalan people should be famous for patience while waiting. Occasionally a whole group of names would be called out over a tannoy system and a motley bunch would disappear through some swing doors. Eventually I was allowed to lie down on a trolley in a corridor and wait there. Then we were moved to a little cubicle and blood was taken very painlessly, by a nurse who hardly raised his eyes from the floor. More hours passed and eventually a conversation started up between our room and another across the corridor – after hours of waiting he was worried that as a diabetic he needed to eat something soon. Protesting voices began to sound from various cubicles – people isolated and abandoned and unable to catch any of the white blurs of nurses who occasionally whizzed past. This at least did bring a nurse and we discovered that there was no ultrasound machine so the visit started to seem pointless as well as prolonged. A very pleasant Polish doctor finally arrived, told me my blood counts were good, wrote a referral to a urologist and send me for an x-ray. Walking through the corridors on the way to X-ray I saw many of the same people from the waiting room, lying on narrow beds with a family member quietly by their side. It is totally normal here for someone to stay with you all night in hospital which seems so much more humane than a system of waiting hours and scary isolation.

The next day we made a same day appointment to see a specialist privately. The office was more comfortable for waiting but we were still there for three hours. The urologist was a very pleasant man who agreed that this bleeding was not the norm and offered to arrange an ultrasound in the next week – it will be done in the general health system again and back in the local hospital. Meanwhile I am feeling much better and thinking that when I get my energy back I must look for work so I can receive full health care here. For more information click HERE

Next post I hope will be about Festes Majors – the summer parties that are now in full swing.