Glory Ho

Oh my.

Recently, I took a trip to a Bulgarian medical facility for a chest x-ray (I’m fine Mom, really). So far, I’d been prodded, diagnosed and prescriptioned inside the Peace Corps office. But I’d heard the horror stories about the hospitals, been shocked at the descriptions of shoddy equipment and incompetent personnel. Yet nothing quite prepares you for second-world healthcare, until you’re there, floating through a sickly sphere, taking in a less-than-trendy vintage view, of a place traditionally designed to care for, clean and cure.

On my first trip, a Peace Corps staffer led me through blurry back doors into what certainly appeared to be a vacant building. Inside was no better–sun-stained, unlit hallways of complete silence. After a brief conversation with half a face behind half a window, we headed down the hall. An unusually small door. A knock. A tiny lab. A woman. Her gray lips held a cigarette. A soda can at her chest. Her uniform was a jaundiced shade of white. I wanted to run, but I was told to wait.

The leaves of a plant beside me rested on the floor as if they preferred this position. The clock indicated that it was 7:13. I’d come from lunch. Then I did that thing you do when you’re not sure what to do. I sat very still. Shifted my eyes. Kept my previously clean hands to myself. Somehow this feels safer, doesn’t it?It’s like a mental fetal position.

But I thought ok, it’s cool. I mean, I just need a chest scan. An x-ray. It’s not like I’m getting a papsmere. No cold gel. No gloves. But somehow, comfort did not come.

Then I was in a room. A room with a shiny new x-ray machine. Wow! That was encouraging. But upon further inspection of the room, I realized, that obviously, this machine had been stolen. Obviously, it did not belong there. The perimeter of the room–the point where the wall meets the floor had not been washed in many, many years. It was lined with something sticky. Mice-holes. Grime. Scuffs. The walls were even worse. There was an empty bulb socket where a light should have been. The windows were not transparent. It was like seeing a High Definition Plasma Screen TV in a Cabrini Green project apartment. Like I had entered an abandoned house which was sometimes frequented by crack-whores. But today, by some tragic mistake, the medical supply company had mixed it up with the hospital and had een by to deliver an x-ray machine! Lucky me!

Oh I get it, I thought with relief. This is a dream. You know how in dreams weird things are always coming together. Like you’re at the zoo, but its the people that are in the cages, or you’re in the park, but your bedroom is there. Right.

But I did what I was told. What choice did I really have? And as I pressed my bare breasts against the cold glass machine and let that nurse photograph my insides and took deep breaths and squeezed my eyes shut, I was grateful that over the course of two years, this was the first time I’d been inside a Bulgarian medical facility.

Stay tuned for Part Two: The CAT Scan (Again, Mom, I really am okay!)