I Remember Barcelona

I was relieved when I lay down at night. Goodbye Royale with Cheese.

Then the snoring. I only got an hours sleep. Woke up to watch sunrise over spain.

It looked a lot less like Mexico than I expected, a lot more like Melbourne. But everywhere looks like Melbourne. Melbourne is Melbourne.

The mother fucker is still snoring but my back hurts. I lie there for as long as I am able. The air feels like it's been in and out of the same lungs all morning.

I get to the bathroom, my back feels all cramped. I try stretching it out. Stretching it out doesn't help. I drink some more water. I go sit in my room on my seat and think about the 100 euro's a blew on that fucking bike bag.

Back still hurts, I go to the toilet again, this time just for more comfortable seating. I think I'm sick from the damn air. Like the train doesn't have any ventilation for the outside world. I stand and do more stretches, but my back just feels worse.

I go sit down, look through my bags for whatever gelatinous fucking snacks I have left from cycling. They are kind of sweaty but I down them because they are the only food I have. I suspect I should have just dumped my bike in France and would have come out the same. I just couldn't bare to leave Rosante in an alleyway in creepy creepy Paris.

Finally after maybe like 10 years the train pulls up. I don't do my aching back any favors getting my luggage on the platform. I'm in Barcelona. So close to my sisters place. My ordeal is almost over.

Except my back hurts. My back is fucking killing me. I decide I need water. Can't find any fucking vending machines that are actually stocked.

I try sitting.

I try standing.

I try lying down on the platform.

It hurts every which way.

I abandon my bags and go looking for help.

Get redirected twice, the pain is overwhelming, blinding and I just want to vomit. Like my insides are petrifying and collapsing in on each other.

I ask the lady for the hospital, she get's out the metro map.

I interrupt her claiming I need the toilet in order to puke. The point in the general direction, I try to say I think I will pass out on the way. They don't understand so I just try to make it.

I think I'm going to puke on the floor. I don't and by the time I reach the bathroom the feeling has passed.

I stick around just in case the treacherous sensation comes back.

I go back and tell them I need the hospital to pick me up.

After assuring them I really do want the hospital to pick me up, the call the hospital.

A security guard tells me not to lie on the couch and to sit up straight. I try waving him off but eventually relent. It's not like it makes a difference.

The ambulance guys come, I tell them I'm in pain, that the primary concern is pain, and that I would like something for the pain.

I have heard that doctors and ambo's have to treat the primary complaint first.

They give me nothing, they take me to emergency. At emergency a guy checks that I have insurance. They take me to sit in a room.

Then someone comes to ask me if I'm alright. Then they get me to give a urine sample. Then they give me a needle of some kind.

Then I'm told to wait. So I wait.

I waited, periodically going to the toilet. Going to the toilet get's harder and harder, except for throwing up which becomes more frequent. Throwing up because of pain is unhelpful and unpleasant. It is the kind of throwing up where you feel completely not better afterwards, no "well that was awful but my stomach seems to be real happy and my head seems clearer" you just vomit, and then maybe you vomit again.

Anyway, I end up waiting in a waiting room, I am told repeatedly to wait. My pain does not go away. At some point I am taken for an x-ray.

Then more waiting 3 hours maybe 4. I keep going to the english speaking staff asking for something for the pain. I am told to wait. I tell them I am happy to fucking wait if someone will give me something for the pain, then I will wait forever.

I get told I have kidney stones, about 6 of them, this seems like a lot to me. They write me a prescription for pain killers to take then discharge me.

I am still not sure to this day whether anyone at that hospital actually gave me any pain killers.

I found the station again eventually, then accomodation somehow. It was probably 5 by the time I got all settled, having arrived at 5 am. I get my drugs and buy about 4 litres of water which seems like a good start.

One of the painkillers I am just not sure how to take, so I only follow half the course. The tablets take about 30 minutes to kick in.

I drift off to sleep in my windowless room after giving up on spanish television - it seems far too catholic.

I didn't igure out until it was all over that the confrontingly musty smell of wet paint was actually a hangover of wet clothes from Netherlands.

I went to sleep in the dark and woke up in the dark and went to the toilet 6 times a day, hoping yet dreading that I would pass my kidney stones.

Eventually I drink from the glass ampolas of pain killers, snapping them open. They only take 10 minutes to kick in and taste like satan's ballsack.

But then I feel fine, I can walk around town like a normal person. After two days I actually feel like eating again.

There is no sensation, no moment so moving as being able to eat again after days of health related starvation. In India and Barcelona I new this sensation and both times it almost brought tears to my eyes.

I never passed the stones, I just eventually stopped feeling pain about 10 days after it began. I still have the painkillers in my backpack.