My medical staff has switched out every day; tomorrow will make 6 nights in the hospital and I've had a different nurse every day. Today's variant seemed very shy but very sweet, and she grinned when she came in and saw me sitting on the windowsill and playing my guitar.
Russians, by the way, are very particular about sitting. Who sits, how, and where are all potential cultural battlegrounds. For one thing, women are always offered a seat before men. Old women before mothers, mothers with children before young women, and pretty women before...all the rest. On a crowded bus or Metro car, young men can almost certainly count on standing. By the time they hit their 20's it's practically an instinct--they don't even try to take a seat if there's a crowd. At first it seems polite, but after awhile the underlying chauvinism peeks through the curtain of what looks like a very respectful gesture. That's not to say that if a young man offers me his seat on the bus I'll turn it down, shake my fist and grumble about sexism and equal rights. No, I'll probably thank him and take the seat, because it's better than standing and it will only cause a scene if I don't. Still, though, being treated daily as though I'm less capable of standing than some бездельник who stinks of vodka has become one of the everyday burrs of nostalgia for my homeland.
It's also very rude to sit with your legs crossed in what is known as "American-style", with one ankle propped up on the other knee and the legs apart. And the list of places you aren't allowed to sit is long and extensive: any floor, the curb, the 6-story escalators in the Metro, anywhere cold, the windowsill--essentially, anywhere that's not specifically designated as "chair", "bench", or "sofa".
But I digress.
The doctor told me today that, unless I redevelop a fever, I'll be free to go tomorrow morning, provided I stay home from class until Thursday (ha) and come back in a week for follow-up. I'm beside myself with excitement at the prospect of re-entering The Outside World. I just want to get out of here!
But, as I'm not sure how soon I'll once again have free time, internet, and inclination all at once, I'm taking advantage of my last night in the hospital to reveal my plans for the next few weeks. They're actually looking pretty busy.
--Next weekend, November 19th-23rd...is the program trip to Moscow! We're leaving Thursday night and coming back Monday morning, and I don't know what our specific itinerary is, but there's bound to be some free time in which I will embark on adventures.
--November 26th...Thanksgiving! Which is so quintessentially American that of course the program coordinators have planned a group Thanksgiving dinner, which is bound to be a fiasco. Our hostess has invited us all to the apartment where she lives alone, which I'm sure is plenty comfortable for her but less so for 30+ people and a Thanksgiving spread. But it will be cozy and we will eat, drink, and be merry, and hopefully the chaos will be the good kind. I'm also looking forward to cooking something for it.
--November 28th...My mommy is coming to visit! I know it's only been a few months since I said goodbye in Spokane, but I'm far more excited than I should be to see her. She'll be here until December 7th and I'm jazzed about showing her around my city.
--November 29th...I'm going to the ballet! The Smolny-Bard program is treating its American students & guests to a performance of Don Quixote at the Mariinsky Theatre.
--December 1st...Gogol Bordello is playing at GlavKlub in St. Petersburg and IIIIIII've got tickets!
--December 10th-13th...Skipping town for the weekend to visit Gordon in Helsinki, see the city, and celebrate the Finnish release of his new book.
...And then it's already mid-December and time to start thinking about my final exams and papers and how to fit my semester back into the suitcase from whence it came!
But now isn't the time for that. All I need to worry about for the time being is how to carry all my stuff back to the dorm tomorrow morning. And what to do with all these persimmons...
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Friday, November 13, 2009
But Doctor, you must be joking.
I feel like I could easily be the main character in some musty, psychological Gogol nightmare, minus all the squalor and filth. In this story, the patient visits the doctor for an ailment small and unassuming--a sore throat, a cough, headaches in the afternoons, the choice is left to author. The important bit is only that the patient be largely unconcerned. But the doctor listens to the patient's lungs and heartbeat, peers into her ears, takes her temperature, then steps back with hands folded and pronounces--well, something big, something far more serious than the patient expected. Surely, doctor, you can't be serious! No, it really is ----, and we can't let you leave until we've got this sorted out. You'll just have to stay the night. Don't be alarmed.
So she's taken to her room by closed-mouthed nurses (Would the story be better if they gave instructions in a different language? They did.) who buzz around her hospital bed. They draw blood, start an IV of a fluorescent yellow liquid with no explanation, thrust a medicinally-sweet smelling drink into her hand and tell her to drink it. Tablets are given. She is made to inhale an astringent gas that dries out her mouth and tastes like pennies.
And the way the story would go, over the next few days she is poked, prodded, and x-rayed repeatedly, and all the while the nurses empty bottles of liquid the color of lemon gatorade into her veins. Every morning they take her blood pressure and temperature, pursing their lips at the results and whisking them away before the patient can see. The doctor tells her her condition is getting worse, they need to do more tests, take more x-rays, up the medication, keep her longer. The patient begins to get anxious, pent up in her room. And throughout the story--it would only be a few pages, the length of a Pushkin tale--the better she feels the darker the doctor's pronouncements become: her lung has collapsed, or her liver is ill, or--what have you, but they must do a surgery, she absolutely cannot leave just yet. And of course, because it's a work of fiction, the patient acquiesces to everything, grateful that the doctor is preempting these ailments before they cause her body pain. She goes for days, for weeks without leaving the hospital, without seeing the sun, and begins to view her room as a prison, the silent nurses as guards, the doctor as a foreman. Her muscle wastes away. A year passes and she has begun to feel sick, more frail and fatigued with every procedure they perform, though other than the side effects of the surgeries she feels no ill health. And because it's Gogol, after a year she is finally let go, a gaunt and hollow bent stick of a woman, pronounced cured by the doctor. Maybe in the end she'll discover that she was healthy all along and go insane, true to the author's body of work.
Clearly, Based on a True Story (tm).
The only truth in that is that I don't feel ill other than a slight wheezing and a strong but intermittent cough. Certainly I don't feel ill enough to STILL be in the hospital. And the doctor does keep telling me I have to stay longer. After my X-rays on Wednesday morning the doctors informed me that I have "A Big, Serious Pneumonia" in my right lung and they couldn't possibly let me leave until Saturday at the earliest. Just three days of intensive care (daily IV antibiotics, pills, and inhalations) and monitoring, then I'm home free with a week's supply of oral antibiotics. So I resigned myself to the rest of the week in this hospital room, made cheerier by the arrival of friends (Thanks friends!!) with essential supplies in hand--books, fruit, chapstick, and cookies--and later our program coordinator with my guitar, a bag of clothing, more fruit and cookies...Now I've got more persimmons than I could eat in a week piled on the corner of my desk, a bunch of bananas, and even STRAWBERRIES, which I hadn't seen since early September. I was concerned I would still have too much fruit to carry by the time they let me out of this place...but this morning they took another x-ray and did indeed see that a part of my lung has essentially glued itself to, um, itself (there's a verb for that in Russian, and that's why I love this language). So they did a bronchioscopy and changed their position once again--turns out I can't leave until Sunday night or Monday morning.
Bronchioscopy, by the way, is disgusting and painful and I don't know why anyone would ever want to become a bronchiosurgeon. Ew.
I'm restless, though. I hate not moving around, seeing the same neutral-colored walls incessantly. I hate being sedentary. Especially when I'm only here for so long! I hate to spend my time here, HERE! being cooped up. And the food is awful...Yeah, for me, hell would be a hospital.
I guess this place isn't all bad, but I am a little sad I'm spending my weekend in the hospital. They let me take a walk today, but it was the first time I'd been outside since Tuesday and probably the only time all weekend. I'm mostly bored, but I have been learning a few songs on the guitar and reading a lot. I finished Heart of Darkness and started Oblomov, and next...well, let's not get ahead of ourselves. We'll take it as it comes.
So she's taken to her room by closed-mouthed nurses (Would the story be better if they gave instructions in a different language? They did.) who buzz around her hospital bed. They draw blood, start an IV of a fluorescent yellow liquid with no explanation, thrust a medicinally-sweet smelling drink into her hand and tell her to drink it. Tablets are given. She is made to inhale an astringent gas that dries out her mouth and tastes like pennies.
And the way the story would go, over the next few days she is poked, prodded, and x-rayed repeatedly, and all the while the nurses empty bottles of liquid the color of lemon gatorade into her veins. Every morning they take her blood pressure and temperature, pursing their lips at the results and whisking them away before the patient can see. The doctor tells her her condition is getting worse, they need to do more tests, take more x-rays, up the medication, keep her longer. The patient begins to get anxious, pent up in her room. And throughout the story--it would only be a few pages, the length of a Pushkin tale--the better she feels the darker the doctor's pronouncements become: her lung has collapsed, or her liver is ill, or--what have you, but they must do a surgery, she absolutely cannot leave just yet. And of course, because it's a work of fiction, the patient acquiesces to everything, grateful that the doctor is preempting these ailments before they cause her body pain. She goes for days, for weeks without leaving the hospital, without seeing the sun, and begins to view her room as a prison, the silent nurses as guards, the doctor as a foreman. Her muscle wastes away. A year passes and she has begun to feel sick, more frail and fatigued with every procedure they perform, though other than the side effects of the surgeries she feels no ill health. And because it's Gogol, after a year she is finally let go, a gaunt and hollow bent stick of a woman, pronounced cured by the doctor. Maybe in the end she'll discover that she was healthy all along and go insane, true to the author's body of work.
Clearly, Based on a True Story (tm).
The only truth in that is that I don't feel ill other than a slight wheezing and a strong but intermittent cough. Certainly I don't feel ill enough to STILL be in the hospital. And the doctor does keep telling me I have to stay longer. After my X-rays on Wednesday morning the doctors informed me that I have "A Big, Serious Pneumonia" in my right lung and they couldn't possibly let me leave until Saturday at the earliest. Just three days of intensive care (daily IV antibiotics, pills, and inhalations) and monitoring, then I'm home free with a week's supply of oral antibiotics. So I resigned myself to the rest of the week in this hospital room, made cheerier by the arrival of friends (Thanks friends!!) with essential supplies in hand--books, fruit, chapstick, and cookies--and later our program coordinator with my guitar, a bag of clothing, more fruit and cookies...Now I've got more persimmons than I could eat in a week piled on the corner of my desk, a bunch of bananas, and even STRAWBERRIES, which I hadn't seen since early September. I was concerned I would still have too much fruit to carry by the time they let me out of this place...but this morning they took another x-ray and did indeed see that a part of my lung has essentially glued itself to, um, itself (there's a verb for that in Russian, and that's why I love this language). So they did a bronchioscopy and changed their position once again--turns out I can't leave until Sunday night or Monday morning.
Bronchioscopy, by the way, is disgusting and painful and I don't know why anyone would ever want to become a bronchiosurgeon. Ew.
I'm restless, though. I hate not moving around, seeing the same neutral-colored walls incessantly. I hate being sedentary. Especially when I'm only here for so long! I hate to spend my time here, HERE! being cooped up. And the food is awful...Yeah, for me, hell would be a hospital.
I guess this place isn't all bad, but I am a little sad I'm spending my weekend in the hospital. They let me take a walk today, but it was the first time I'd been outside since Tuesday and probably the only time all weekend. I'm mostly bored, but I have been learning a few songs on the guitar and reading a lot. I finished Heart of Darkness and started Oblomov, and next...well, let's not get ahead of ourselves. We'll take it as it comes.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
At least it's not swine flu!
Whoooooo deep breath. Propped up on an overly-springy pillow, full from a classic Russian breakfast, warm and cozy in my hospital bed under the care of the nurses and with every convenience in reach, I feel as though I'm getting my first chance to breathe freely since mid-October. Though, given the circumstances, I'm hardly breathing freely.
These past several weeks have been a rough ride. The Pushkinskaya-10 Sea Level festival coincided perfectly with the cluster of midterms huddled around the semester's halfway point, and I suddenly found myself at the Manege exhibition hall nearly every day, without evenings free to study, but meeting artists, musicians, and the movers-and-shakers behind the Pushkinskaya-10 phenomenon. A worthy trade-off, to be sure, but also a stretch in terms of time and energy. Between schlepping to and from classes, violin lessons, and volunteering I'd somehow managed to absorb all of my free time. Even the Uzbek Bread guy, whose kiosk I've taken to visiting nearly every weekday for a delicious, nutritious (I'm sure) lunch of лепёшка ассорти, remarked that he hadn't seen me all week.
In the midst of all this, the weather turned bright, sharp, and clear, and the sun made its first appearance of the month three weeks into October. I took advantage of the situation to call an acquaintance I'd made who, within moments of meeting, confided in me that he had the key to the exhibition hall's roof and invited me to do "rare photography" if the weather ever cleared. I dragged Sarah into the deal and the three of us spent an hour that frigid afternoon taking photos with the unbelievable view of Исаакевская Площадь(That's "St. Isaac's Square" for you Cyrillic-challenged readers) as backdrop. Our gracious host took every chance to remind us that not only was the excursion strictly illegal and not a little bit dangerous, we were also the first Americans ever to set foot on that roof. Пионеры такие! While we were breathing life back into our frozen digits in Manege's underground cafe and bragging about our adventure to our coworker Tamuna, Anna (the closest person we had to a boss) called Sarah's cell phone and summoned us to the registration table, presumably to reprimand us harshly for abandoning our posts for the past hour or so. We approached Anna braced for a tongue-lashing, and instead received...an invitation to th concert that night celebrating 20 years of Pushkinskaya-10, with Russian rock legends DDT and Аквариум headlining! I thanked my laziness and stinginess for holding me back from buying tickets, which I'd been meaning to do ever since posters advertising the concert began plastering themselves over every available surface over a month ago. I've got a soft spot for DDT after learning their 1990's hit "Что такое осень" ("What is Autumn") in Phonetics class. It turns out that the lead singer of Аквариум had swine flu or something, so DDT was the only big name playing, and we stood patiently through the opening bands in anticipation. But, we stood patiently for too long (i.e. Boris Butusov played WAY past his welcome) and by the time DDT took the stage I was already starting to check my watch. Tired, achy, and cranky, I missed the last bus home and had to take the metro, then walk the remaining 20 minutes to the dorm in the crackling cold.
By the next afternoon (Halloween, coincidentally), it was clear that I'd come down with something, likely while gallivanting on the roof of the art gallery. I dragged myself robotically through the usually-enjoyable printmaking class and what would have been a really fun, interesting outing to the Buddhist Temple on Petrograd side with Sarah and Andrey (and their friend Dima) before I decided to call it a day, cancel my plans for costumed clubbing later in the evening, and curl up with a cup of tea and some Nyquil until I passed out. I made a cameo appearance at the Halloween party the girls across the hall were throwing, and in conversation with my multinational peers I was educated about various traditional Russian home remedies. A cup of tea with a shot of cognac for a cold, vodka with black pepper for a sore throat--and for a fever, hot water with the juice of two lemons and then STRAIGHT to bed, and no delay!
I had all those symptoms and all the necessary ingredients on hand, so I shrugged my shoulders and tried everything that was suggested to me, and woke up the next morning not only delirious with fever, but slightly hungover to boot. So much for home remedies...
I barely had a day to recover my strength (half of which was spent shivering at Manege) before the barrage of midterms resumed. I coughed and stumbled my way through the week, and this past weekend I spent every available moment poring over the texts from my Impressionism class, trying hopelessly to somehow absorb into my germ-clogged brain (osmosis?) the ideas necessary for my oral miterm exam, which was on Monday. At some point during my many comings and goings from Cafe Dubai (for the wi-fi), there appeared next to the elevators, surreptitiously and unannounced, a list--ten pages long, with a header in Russian--of students who were required to bring "fluorography results" to the dormitory's main office, and who, in the case of noncompliance, would find themselves within the week lacking card access to the building.
That's just how it is here. You don't ask questions, you just do it. Except that I did ask questions, since I had no idea what flurography is, nor how or where to obtain results. I sniffed out the answers from my Italian roommates: fluorography is an X-ray procedure used to detect signs of tuberculosis, and Russians generally get tested once a year. It's apparently really difficult to get a job if you don't have current fluorography records, because who knows? you could infect the rest of the staff and leave the business without employees.
I needed an excuse not to go my Conversation Practice class before my midterm on Monday afternoon, and medical testing is always good for that! Plus, I value having a working key to my place of residence...so Monday morning I got off the bus a few stops early, with directions in hand to a clinic and fluorography lab. The building was a one-story, square, pseudo-neoclassical structure painted mustard yellow (I couldn't help recalling that yellow, in Russian culture, is the color of sickness and insanity--mental asylums are painted yellow. Raskolnikov's wallpaper was yellow), squatting inside a cast-iron fence with an overgrown, weedy lawn. The interior, once I had walked around half the building to find the entrance, was filled with warped light from frosted windows, refracted into a faint insalubrious glow by the dull tiles and pale walls of an indistinguishable color, a sickly sterile smell, by which I could identify that this was a hospital even though it looked more like a bathhouse than any hospital I'd ever seen, and--of course--a line of people already waiting to register for their test. Four or five middle-school boys in matching tracksuits sat around indolently, and a silent old man in a leather jacket and newsboy cap, standard apparel for St. Petersbur's elderly, held the spot ahead of me.
They summoned us based on gender into a separate waiting room where we took off our shirts and stood around shivering while they called patients one by one into the X-ray room. When my turn came I stood in front of the machine awkwardly, not sure if I understood the nurse's instructions (it takes my Russian language muscles awhile to warm up in the morning). The x-rays showed up on her computer screen and her eyes widened. "Девушка! Ты болеешь?"(Miss! Are you sick?) My heart thumped and I held up my fingers an inch apart to indicate "чуть-чуть". She left the room and I waited only a moment, wishing I had my shirt on, before she reappeared with the doctor, speaking fast and low. He sat down and inspected the pictures of my lungs, then yelled over to me, "Девушка! Ты болеешь?" I grew more concerned, and not only because they were addressing me in the personal ты instead of the formal вы. "I just had the flu" I explained, and he chuckled darkly. At this point I think both he and the nurse noticed I was still half-naked, and told me to get dressed and wait outside.
I sat in the doctor's office while he rattled off a bunch of medical terms I didn't understand, presumably explaining what he was jabbing his finger at on my x-ray. Finally he stopped mid-sentence and asked, "How much Russian do you know?" and I explained that I'm studying here but don't know any medical language. He nodded and then said very slowly, "Do you know, what is пневмония?" I blanked for a moment, trying to make sense of "pnev-muh-NI-ya", and then suddenly remembered that Russian has a nasty habit of replacing "u" and "w" with "v" in foreign words. "OH!....Pnevmenia?!"
So that's it, kids. I've got pneumonia. The clinic wanted to send me to a doctor right away, but I'd been studying all week for this midterm and there was no way in hell I was going to miss it on account of a silly cough. So I walked the eight blocks remaining to Smolny, took my oral exam--and passed it, with a B+, with pneumonia, in Russian! I'm clearly a demi-god. But still sick, so last night I took the bus across town after class to Euro-med, the posh clinic where the doctors speak English and there's a coffee machine in the lobby, and which also happens to be free with my health insurance through Smolny. The doctor (Doctor Boris) looked me over and gave me a talking-to for waiting so long to come and see him, and then told me I'd have to spend the night at the clinic because although they work 24-hours, they'd already shut down their x-ray machine for the night. And I would be lying if I didn't say that my night in this hospital room has been the most comfortable experience I've had since I got to Russia. They didn't feed me dinner, but breakfast was great, and I just checked out "Heart of Darkness" from the city library's foreign language collection yesterday.
The only hitch is that I'm paying for it in blood, quite literally, with the holes they've poked in both my arms to run tests and inject me with antiphlegmatics. That, and I don't know when they'll let me go. They need to do more tests, I think, and x-rays as well...To be quite honest, I'm getting better health care here than I could ever afford in the United States. But, to be quite honest, I wouldn't have gotten pneumonia in the United States, either.
These past several weeks have been a rough ride. The Pushkinskaya-10 Sea Level festival coincided perfectly with the cluster of midterms huddled around the semester's halfway point, and I suddenly found myself at the Manege exhibition hall nearly every day, without evenings free to study, but meeting artists, musicians, and the movers-and-shakers behind the Pushkinskaya-10 phenomenon. A worthy trade-off, to be sure, but also a stretch in terms of time and energy. Between schlepping to and from classes, violin lessons, and volunteering I'd somehow managed to absorb all of my free time. Even the Uzbek Bread guy, whose kiosk I've taken to visiting nearly every weekday for a delicious, nutritious (I'm sure) lunch of лепёшка ассорти, remarked that he hadn't seen me all week.
In the midst of all this, the weather turned bright, sharp, and clear, and the sun made its first appearance of the month three weeks into October. I took advantage of the situation to call an acquaintance I'd made who, within moments of meeting, confided in me that he had the key to the exhibition hall's roof and invited me to do "rare photography" if the weather ever cleared. I dragged Sarah into the deal and the three of us spent an hour that frigid afternoon taking photos with the unbelievable view of Исаакевская Площадь(That's "St. Isaac's Square" for you Cyrillic-challenged readers) as backdrop. Our gracious host took every chance to remind us that not only was the excursion strictly illegal and not a little bit dangerous, we were also the first Americans ever to set foot on that roof. Пионеры такие! While we were breathing life back into our frozen digits in Manege's underground cafe and bragging about our adventure to our coworker Tamuna, Anna (the closest person we had to a boss) called Sarah's cell phone and summoned us to the registration table, presumably to reprimand us harshly for abandoning our posts for the past hour or so. We approached Anna braced for a tongue-lashing, and instead received...an invitation to th concert that night celebrating 20 years of Pushkinskaya-10, with Russian rock legends DDT and Аквариум headlining! I thanked my laziness and stinginess for holding me back from buying tickets, which I'd been meaning to do ever since posters advertising the concert began plastering themselves over every available surface over a month ago. I've got a soft spot for DDT after learning their 1990's hit "Что такое осень" ("What is Autumn") in Phonetics class. It turns out that the lead singer of Аквариум had swine flu or something, so DDT was the only big name playing, and we stood patiently through the opening bands in anticipation. But, we stood patiently for too long (i.e. Boris Butusov played WAY past his welcome) and by the time DDT took the stage I was already starting to check my watch. Tired, achy, and cranky, I missed the last bus home and had to take the metro, then walk the remaining 20 minutes to the dorm in the crackling cold.
By the next afternoon (Halloween, coincidentally), it was clear that I'd come down with something, likely while gallivanting on the roof of the art gallery. I dragged myself robotically through the usually-enjoyable printmaking class and what would have been a really fun, interesting outing to the Buddhist Temple on Petrograd side with Sarah and Andrey (and their friend Dima) before I decided to call it a day, cancel my plans for costumed clubbing later in the evening, and curl up with a cup of tea and some Nyquil until I passed out. I made a cameo appearance at the Halloween party the girls across the hall were throwing, and in conversation with my multinational peers I was educated about various traditional Russian home remedies. A cup of tea with a shot of cognac for a cold, vodka with black pepper for a sore throat--and for a fever, hot water with the juice of two lemons and then STRAIGHT to bed, and no delay!
I had all those symptoms and all the necessary ingredients on hand, so I shrugged my shoulders and tried everything that was suggested to me, and woke up the next morning not only delirious with fever, but slightly hungover to boot. So much for home remedies...
I barely had a day to recover my strength (half of which was spent shivering at Manege) before the barrage of midterms resumed. I coughed and stumbled my way through the week, and this past weekend I spent every available moment poring over the texts from my Impressionism class, trying hopelessly to somehow absorb into my germ-clogged brain (osmosis?) the ideas necessary for my oral miterm exam, which was on Monday. At some point during my many comings and goings from Cafe Dubai (for the wi-fi), there appeared next to the elevators, surreptitiously and unannounced, a list--ten pages long, with a header in Russian--of students who were required to bring "fluorography results" to the dormitory's main office, and who, in the case of noncompliance, would find themselves within the week lacking card access to the building.
That's just how it is here. You don't ask questions, you just do it. Except that I did ask questions, since I had no idea what flurography is, nor how or where to obtain results. I sniffed out the answers from my Italian roommates: fluorography is an X-ray procedure used to detect signs of tuberculosis, and Russians generally get tested once a year. It's apparently really difficult to get a job if you don't have current fluorography records, because who knows? you could infect the rest of the staff and leave the business without employees.
I needed an excuse not to go my Conversation Practice class before my midterm on Monday afternoon, and medical testing is always good for that! Plus, I value having a working key to my place of residence...so Monday morning I got off the bus a few stops early, with directions in hand to a clinic and fluorography lab. The building was a one-story, square, pseudo-neoclassical structure painted mustard yellow (I couldn't help recalling that yellow, in Russian culture, is the color of sickness and insanity--mental asylums are painted yellow. Raskolnikov's wallpaper was yellow), squatting inside a cast-iron fence with an overgrown, weedy lawn. The interior, once I had walked around half the building to find the entrance, was filled with warped light from frosted windows, refracted into a faint insalubrious glow by the dull tiles and pale walls of an indistinguishable color, a sickly sterile smell, by which I could identify that this was a hospital even though it looked more like a bathhouse than any hospital I'd ever seen, and--of course--a line of people already waiting to register for their test. Four or five middle-school boys in matching tracksuits sat around indolently, and a silent old man in a leather jacket and newsboy cap, standard apparel for St. Petersbur's elderly, held the spot ahead of me.
They summoned us based on gender into a separate waiting room where we took off our shirts and stood around shivering while they called patients one by one into the X-ray room. When my turn came I stood in front of the machine awkwardly, not sure if I understood the nurse's instructions (it takes my Russian language muscles awhile to warm up in the morning). The x-rays showed up on her computer screen and her eyes widened. "Девушка! Ты болеешь?"(Miss! Are you sick?) My heart thumped and I held up my fingers an inch apart to indicate "чуть-чуть". She left the room and I waited only a moment, wishing I had my shirt on, before she reappeared with the doctor, speaking fast and low. He sat down and inspected the pictures of my lungs, then yelled over to me, "Девушка! Ты болеешь?" I grew more concerned, and not only because they were addressing me in the personal ты instead of the formal вы. "I just had the flu" I explained, and he chuckled darkly. At this point I think both he and the nurse noticed I was still half-naked, and told me to get dressed and wait outside.
I sat in the doctor's office while he rattled off a bunch of medical terms I didn't understand, presumably explaining what he was jabbing his finger at on my x-ray. Finally he stopped mid-sentence and asked, "How much Russian do you know?" and I explained that I'm studying here but don't know any medical language. He nodded and then said very slowly, "Do you know, what is пневмония?" I blanked for a moment, trying to make sense of "pnev-muh-NI-ya", and then suddenly remembered that Russian has a nasty habit of replacing "u" and "w" with "v" in foreign words. "OH!....Pnevmenia?!"
So that's it, kids. I've got pneumonia. The clinic wanted to send me to a doctor right away, but I'd been studying all week for this midterm and there was no way in hell I was going to miss it on account of a silly cough. So I walked the eight blocks remaining to Smolny, took my oral exam--and passed it, with a B+, with pneumonia, in Russian! I'm clearly a demi-god. But still sick, so last night I took the bus across town after class to Euro-med, the posh clinic where the doctors speak English and there's a coffee machine in the lobby, and which also happens to be free with my health insurance through Smolny. The doctor (Doctor Boris) looked me over and gave me a talking-to for waiting so long to come and see him, and then told me I'd have to spend the night at the clinic because although they work 24-hours, they'd already shut down their x-ray machine for the night. And I would be lying if I didn't say that my night in this hospital room has been the most comfortable experience I've had since I got to Russia. They didn't feed me dinner, but breakfast was great, and I just checked out "Heart of Darkness" from the city library's foreign language collection yesterday.
The only hitch is that I'm paying for it in blood, quite literally, with the holes they've poked in both my arms to run tests and inject me with antiphlegmatics. That, and I don't know when they'll let me go. They need to do more tests, I think, and x-rays as well...To be quite honest, I'm getting better health care here than I could ever afford in the United States. But, to be quite honest, I wouldn't have gotten pneumonia in the United States, either.
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