Last night I got to go to a real Hungarian hospital! I'm feeling fine - I don't want anyone freaking out...but the experience was so david lynch-ian that i just had to write about it.
After a long day of class, and a visit to SEENPM, a consortium of professional journalist organizations in central and southeast europe, a few of us went out for drinks - first at a very cool serbian bar, and then at an even cooler rooftop bar called corvinteto. and guess what?! the hike up the stairs to that bar made getting to my apt look like a joke!
beers later...with the exciting turkey-croatia match on a huge screen before us, and after hours spent talking about free press and media distortia in romania, armenia, and the u.s., i got up off my stool, and as i walked to the toilette, realized that my left leg felt totally weird...then i realized that my left calf was swollen, and then i realized that this was exactly the sensation i felt two aprils ago in st. louis, when i had to go to the hospital b/c everyone was worried i would get an embolism. fuck.
so i walked on it a bit. wasn't even buzzed, so i knew it wasn't some paranoic fantasy...asked the others, and they all confirmed, that yes, my left calf was more swollen....was it painful? no. it just felt like someone was giving me a calf-lift - meaning, that they were pulling my skin taut...and it was weird.
so kate coyer, one of my two wonderful course directors (more on kate later), who i had been chatting with this whole time, turns to the resident budapest-ian at the table, and asks him if he knows where the nearest 24 hour pharmacy is, or if it were to get worse after i got home, where the emergency room was (since i don't have a landline or a cell phone)....and he had no idea. then he made a quick phone call, and came back with news that there was a 24-hour clinic a few blocks away from my flat...and as kate and i were going that way, she came with me.
this is when the adventure started.
so we get to this 24 hour clinic - and we only know that it's that b/c we had the numeric address, and because it was the only faintly lit place on the whole street. so we rang the door and two "emt's" in yellow polos tucked into red chinos came to the door, and looked at me dumbstruck as i said "angolul?" ("english?") and they shook their heads, but motioned for us to come in.
then i played charades, and attempted to explain that i was worried about blood clotting, and that my leg was swollen, but that it had gone down a bit...and then he nodded because he measured, and i was right...but since he had no idea what i meant by blood clot or anything else, kate called her hungarian boyfriend, marzi, who kindly relayed the message....and then the guy said: "passport? insurance?" and i was like - uh, florida ID....insurance on internet - which i explained by pointing to the computer and air-typing...
and then he started filling out a "ticket" which is when we realized that the 24 hour clinic, was really an ambulance depot, although i only saw one ambulance outside and no patients waiting or already inside, and even so it was bizarre at that, b/c the rather heavyset emt had an unlit cigarette in his mouth and i think that if i wasn't there it would have been lit...
and then this guy went to his black box, filled with stetoscopes, and medical gizmos, and he pulled out - A STAMP. i was beginning to get the sneaking suspicion that they were into stamping documents here (train station, etc.), which was confirmed by marzi today over brunch.
then they told us to go to a hospital i can't pronounce, let alone spell...which we found on the map, and since it was close by, and i wasn't feeling pain, but just concerned, and at this point, confused, and totally interested in the things to come....kate too....so we get to the hospital - which sans sign, sans lights, is hard to find...plus all the entrances were locked. even the main one.
but then we saw this one opening - for ambulances i think, and the guardhouse was empty except for a security guard asleep across four chairs, and since i felt too bad and didn't want to wake him up, we just walked onto the compound, and found to the left, a light on....we rang the bell, and an old man came to the door. i handed him the ticket, and he walked into his office - taxi - but then motioned for us to follow him, and he walked us across the eerily empty compound, to a building in which we rang the bell, and waited a few minutes for someone in white exercise-like pants and a white polo (a nurse) to get to the door....i handed her the ticket and she led us to the waiting room, turning the lights on as we went....
so kate and i sat in this BIZARRO waiting room by ourselves for ten minutes, after the woman had said a lot of stuff to us in hungarian and briskly walked away (i think she meant i'll be right back)....and then she returned with the doctor, who thankfully spoke some english. so i explained the problem and then
he said something like: uh huh. and when this happened one ear ago they give you ultrasound? injections? pills?
me: ultrasound, no injection, maybe aspirin. and he said uh huh, we must to begin the therapy right away. the ultrasound no until tuesday.
so kate said: so we'll come back tuesday?
doctor: no. she must stay here over the night. we begin injections. two times a day. testing the blood. one whor (hour).
when we had been waiting for the doctor we had to keep ourselves from laughing, and try not to get caught taking pictures of the place. now, as a cross-eyed older woman in a purple robe with her breasts sagging to godknowswhere emerged from her room to walk to the bathroom, and as kate told me later, an older skinny guy emerged in just small striped underwear, and i was being told that i would need "injections" and to stay for "4 nights" and that there was "therapy" that needed to begin, i was like - uhhhhhhh, what the fuck is going on / /// trying to keep from cracking up. so for the next ten minutes we had to explain that i did not want to stay overnight, and that i just wanted to make sure that i wouldn't die of a spontaneous embolism, and that i just wanted it checked out....and then he said okay, but if it get worse, she come back. and when i asked if i should take ibuprofin - he started laughing and said: you americans think ibuprofin is good for everything! and you take it all of the time!
and then he said he needed to check if i could get aspirin over the counter or needed a prescription...so he went to his colleague's office to check the pharmacology index...and then returned without the answer, so then we went to his office, in the oncology dept, and he wrote me a prescription for something other than aspirin......and by now we had decided i would crash at kate's on buda side, and he directed us to the 24 hour pharmacy there... and he was really very nice, and we left, and then i realized i hadn't paid anything for this consultation, and i guess that's how it works?
so we grabbed a cab, went to the 24hour pharmacy, where you stand outside, buzz the buzzer, and you put your prescription in a turnstile window, then the woman reads it and a few minutes later you leave with drugs in hand! went to kate's....passed out on a carbon copy of my old futon/bed! feeling fine today....we had brunch this morning....and tonight we'll go to the "night of the museums."
earlier this week, we crashed the ceu graduation party....at a place called Godor Club, which is under a shallow pool of water in a city park, and there are tables on the stair landings, and outside (like a pool without water), and then the club is physically under the little pool of water... party began with a local band playing music from this region! which was appropriate b/c i had been hanging out with the "balkans crew" all evening. the bulgarian dance-around-in-a-circle dance, called the huro, looks so much like the hora...and kate and i of course joined in, which was great - b/c two guys did the real traditional dancing in the middle - one of them was even wearing a red bowtie....weird!
when the shitty dj played old justin timberlake, gwen stefani, and gloria estefan, we went outside....
hope you're all well,
beijoux,
amie
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