It's not like Emergency Ward 10

Monday 28th November

What happens if you get sick here?  We have health insurance through the TLG and we tested it out last week.  Martin had spent the whole night coughing and so he decided to ring to arrange a visit to the doctors.  Unfortunately, the appointment was at the hospital in Gori, a nearby city and when I told my co-teacher she said that I must go with him and I was sent out to meet him.  I have been really short of breath myself for a while and couldn’t catch my breath even when walking on the flat so fearing the worst I thought I might as well get checked out too as I was going there anyway.

It took 2 ½ hours to get there and we were ½ an hour late as the taxi driver did not know where the hospital was and drove all over the place duh!  I did not take any pictures but I wish that I’d had done just to give a visual as it was an experience all round.  You’ve seen pictures of our schools, well it is just like that but bigger and grimmer.  A corridor runs through the hospital with rooms off either side which means that the corridor is both dark and effectively a wind tunnel.  Electric lights were absent. The lino was in bits and every now and again an electric heater had been put into the hall way plugged in one of the small rooms with the wire dragged across the corridor.  People just hung around outside doors.  We have no clue as to where we have to go.  All we have is a text from the Insurance Company with the hospital name, address and the Doctor’s name. 

We ask young people who we think may understand English and old people but we spend another twenty minutes wandering around aimlessly in the bitter cold.  One of pleas was heard and a woman brings another woman in a white coat who speaks some English.  She explains that the doctor forgot her phone and she takes us to her surgery and tells us to wait.  There is already one old girl in the doctor’s surgery and we assume we have to wait outside but no, we are told to go in and wait.  We are grateful for the extra warmth but confused as to the system when a few more people join us in the surgery.  The doctor arrives and she deals with patients while we all sit there.  She makes telephone calls and writes prescriptions and bollocked one woman for drinking alcohol (even we could work out that one).  What about patient privacy?  Everyone could hear what was going on.  Presumably if you were going for an STD check-up they would make the rest of us wait outside but you never know!

It came to our turn and we were asked a few questions and then without an examination (other than my pulse being taken) we were both whisked off accompanied by the doctor to have blood tests (no gloves worn by the technician) and chest x-rays.  It is kind of like living in an alternate universe in Georgia sometimes, it is all very familiar but with a twist.  The x-ray department looked like something out of the science museum, but in the middle of several abandoned rooms was the warm hidey hole where the x-ray ladies hung out.  There were 6 of them all with varying shades of black and grey hair huddled around a huge radiator that they use to dry the x-rays.  It is all very intimate.  Plants, religious pictures and net curtains.  From this room they can look directly into the x-ray room through a small window and are protected from radiation because the metal walls are very thick.  It looks like the inside of a submarine.  I am sent in first (Martin is having his blood tests) and unsure as to what I am meant to do (nothing unusual there) but I hear a voice and I whip off my upper clothes – you have to leave this to the last minute – I say “Seeva Seeva” (Which means cold, cold) and I hear the ladies laugh from the other room.  The Georgians are always pleasantly surprised when you speak any Georgian and laugh like you are a child saying cute little words) and someone comes in and tell me to press hard against the plate and mimes holding my breath – and so I do and am done.

Martin comes in and makes the school boy error of removing his clothes before he needs to and stands there freezing.  When it’s his turn to press against the plate he yells “Eek” like a cissy and the old ladies laughed out loud at that one and I could detect sadistic tendencies lurking under the surface.  They dried the x-rays on the radiator and examined then and declared that there was nothing wrong with Martin but that I had a chest infection and I was then taken to the cardiology department for an ECG.  Some poor old boy was still on the bed when I came in and they unclipped him and sent him on his way while I was in the room.  I haven’t had this done in the UK but I lay down and they had big clips which they attached to my ankles and wrists and a couple of suckers under my heart.  They then snipped and glued the strips of paper together and sent me back.  They decided they want to do an ultrasound on my heart and I am sent to another department.

This room has 10 people standing around in it with many of the people sitting on the couch which is used for some kind of test and I am not sure what is going to happen here.  There is a room off this room where some tests are done so it would seem that there is some privacy but people wander in and out of it all the time.  The process is slow and my doctor comes back after an hour to see what is happening  and she explains to all the people waiting that I am an English teacher from London and I live in a village outside of Gori – what about patient confidentiality? But when she comes back ½ hour after that and finds I am still waiting just takes me into the test room and the cardiologist comes into the room and does the test.  My clothes are hoisted up but bits of me are still exposed so it is a bit disconcerting to find that patients just open the door and poke their head in to see if the doctor is there while I am laid out like a frozen chicken. 

It is declared that my heart is working perfectly (I was very worried about this) and I am given some nice antibiotics (Russian strength) to sort out my chest.  I am not allowed to drink alcohol – oh dear.  While I am waiting for the documentation to print off a young woman is being laid out on the bed in the waiting room and the machine is being prepared.  I assume this is not an invasive test as it looks like it is going to be public viewing. The doctor lives in the village where Martin teaches and so we are family.  The doctor’s husband comes to pick her up and they kindly drive us straight to the pharmacy, but on the way there, she unwinds the window and in the blink of an eye, we stop next to a man by the side of the road and something is exchanged through the window and then we are off and the window wound up.  What was that about??

We travel onto Tbilisi for the weekend and we went to the ballet and had an over-priced under-spiced Indian meal in the only Indian restaurant in Tbilisi.  The Russian drugs work their magic and in 3 days I can breathe from the bottom of my lungs and feel better than I have done for weeks.