A VISIT TO THE DOCTOR

October 9, 2001

Last Friday I was instructed by my department’s teacher/librarian/personal language helper to be at the hospital Tuesday morning at 9:10 a.m. with a student interpreter/guide from the 5^th year. I would be met there by the woman who coordinates the foreign faculty for my department. I was told not to eat any “fat food” on Monday, and to eat nothing on Tuesday morning. I was very concerned about this for many reasons. One, I had been warned to avoid the medical facilities in Ukraine. And it was obvious from the restricted diet they wanted to do something to me but I didn’t know what or how. Two, if this was an unnecessary procedure or in violation of my rights in Ukraine as a foreigner I didn’t want to go through with it. I joked with myself, “if they tell you to take off your clothes and get in the shower, run like hell!” Three, going to the doctor is not an experience I wanted to share with one of my own students. I had an image of myself sitting in one of those paper gowns answering questions like “how old are you?” “how much do you weigh?” “when was your last period?” and “have you ever had any sexually transmitted diseases?” These are not answers or images I wanted planted in a student’s head when I walked into class the next day. (Though for the record, the answer to the last question is “No.”) In fact, by Tuesday morning I was prepared to ask my student to write down all of the questions in English, send her out of the room, and answer them myself in Russian. The assistant tried to reassure me that they just wanted to take some blood and (mime of her hand waving across her chest). Now I had fears of having blood taken—would the needle be new? If not new, would it be clean? And is their definition of “clean” rinsing it in water? (What can I say, I have a vivid imagination.) And it took us a while to negotiate that her gesture meant chest x-ray, not a breast exam. She said it was very straightforward and I would have nothing to worry about.

On Tuesday morning the assistant dean of my department selected a student guide who was male and seemed to have no interest in talking in English, which didn’t help ease my mind. We arrived and the foreign advisor was there waiting for us. She escorted us into the hospital. She took my passport and two copies of my passport’s picture page and “registratsia” (Ukrainian registration page, not to be confused with the visa). It turned out she wanted three copies, but I had been told to make only two copies. The foreign advisor didn’t bother getting a third copy, though. While waiting for my turn with the nurse, I met other foreign faculty at the university: two Turkish teachers, one German teacher, and one Chinese teacher. I was able to practice my German with the German man, though it’s getting harder to think in German without interference from the Russian language. For example, I kept saying “da” instead of “ja” and “dva” instead of “zwei”. (In English these words mean “yes” and “two”.)

When I got called in to the doctor, I went into the office by myself; my student stayed outside. One fear down. The woman wrote my name in three different notebooks, one of which had carbon paper in it. No computers here. We went into the examination room next door. She said in English “sit down” and gestured that I had to put my arm on an armrest and pump my hand to help the nurse find the veins. She tied the rubber tube around my arm and clamped it with a clamp that looked fairly old. I saw across from me a white and green box of syringes wrapped individually in sterile-looking plastic and was again relieved. Then I noticed that she didn’t have one of those neat Western tubes designed for catching blood, the kind with an orange or purple seal at the top and a printed label on the side. No, here was a wooden rack of test tubes like you might find in a high school or college chemistry lab. Each test tube with blood in it had a cotton ball in it as a stopper, and a number written on the side in charcoal to match it to a name and number in one of the books in the other room. The nurse took out a new tube for me, took out a cotton ball from a cotton bag in between two pieces of very old-looking , brown cotton cloth, stuffed the cotton ball in the top of the tube, and wrote my number on it with the charcoal. She took the blood sample and then gave me another piece of that lovely cotton to stop the bleeding. I went outside to see the foreign advisor again, and through miming I understood that she wanted to know if I had fainted. I said no. Nevertheless, she made it clear through the German teacher that she wanted me to sit for a few minutes before we went to the next place. I tried to explain that I closed my eyes and thought of the beach, but I’m not sure if she understood. The Chinese teacher offered me some of her chocolate, which I thought was very sweet (the offer; the chocolate was just right).

Phase Two of the visit was the chest x-ray. We had to go to another building around the corner for that. When we got there, however, it was under “remont” (repair). It was still open, but there was scaffolding inside and it was even dustier than a Ukrainian entrance usually is. Whatever stereotypes or images I had of a Ukrainian hospital (or medieval sanatarium), this seemed to fit. I crossed myself before walking in. But when we got to the radiology department, there was a sign on the door saying it was closed because of the repairs. This was literally a sign of relief. But the German teacher said that according to the sign we had to go to a bus. I thought he meant we had to get on a bus and go to another part of the city. At this point I felt I could get enough help from the German teacher, and I didn’t want my student missing any more class than he had, so I told him he could go back to the university. Meanwhile, the foreign advisor asked for directions to the bus, and we ended up in an alley behind the hospital. There were a few cars parked backed there. The alley was littered with debris like old car seats, pieces of wood, plastic bags of trash, and more that I can’t remember. There was a truck there, light blue with a red seal that said something “Budapest.” And this truck was the radiology department.

The German teacher said he wished he had a picture, because the people in Germany would never believe this sight. I offered to take a picture with my camera, but we both agreed that it would be rude to do so. He said we’ll just have to write a really good description of it. He added that this was his third year teaching at the school, and the requirements by the state have gotten worse every year. And it’s only an issue in Kharkov; people in other cities like Kiev and Lviv do not have these requirements nor these primitive conditions.

While we all stood in the open air waiting room, the foreign advisor took out pieces of paper from a notepad and tore off pieces for each of us on which she wrote the name and address of the university, our name and home address, and our month and year of birth. Meanwhile other people were getting in the truck in groups of 4 or 5 at a time. When my turn came I got on the truck with the Chinese teacher and one other girl I didn’t know. (Groups were single-sex because you have to take off your shirt to do the x-ray.) The Chinese teacher spoke better Russian than I did, and she and the other girl showed me that it turned out we needed two copies of the information written on the paper. I tore my paper in half and used the pen the Chinese teacher had borrowed from the foreign advisor to try to copy the Cyrillic handwriting as best I could.

After I finished writing, I gave the technician my strips of paper. She looked them over, wrote my x-ray number on them, and then I walked down to the “x-ray room” at the other end of the truck (about 5 feet down). I was the last girl to get the exam so I was alone with the two female technicians. Fortunately one of the technicians knew how to give instructions in English, and I knew enough Russian to say that I was from America (say-shay-ah) and the other girl was from China (Kitai). I pressed myself against that cold steel plate and they took the x-ray. I got dressed and the technician who spoke English stamped one scrap of paper and kept it; the other piece she didn’t stamp but she kept it too. When I got out of the truck, I asked if there was anything else; I was done so I gave back her pen and left.

I walked back to the Metro stop and for the first time I noticed there was a McDonalds across the street from the Metro. Now, I’ve had my share of Big Mac attacks, cravings for those two all-beef patties with cheese and special sauce and fries. But I’ve never had a craving for McDONALDS. And I suddenly needed McDonalds then—I needed to step into a symbol of Western society and wrap myself in it like a warm blanket and a cup of hot cocoa after a long walk in the rain. Maybe I’m being melodramatic, but that’s how it felt. I talked the next day with a Peace Corps fellow and she said the same thing about McDonalds—there’s something very comforting about it. And I must say that this McDonalds did the trick. It was clean, the servers were fast and friendly and well-groomed, and the Big Mac tasted just like it does in the States. Re-energized, I was ready to face the Ukrainian world again.

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