Dodging the Stirrups

Gentle reader, a piece of advice:

If you get sick, try to avoid doing it in a foreign country where you don't (yet) speak the language.

But if you do happen to get sick abroad, do it while working for a company that treats its employees as people.

Yes, I can now say I have had the experience of being under the weather on three continents. During my stay in Taiwan, as regular readers may recall, I came down with a bad cold and ended up seeing a pediatrician who gave me various unidentifiable pills and told me to stay home for two days, much to the chagrin of the unprofessional people I was working for at the time. And now, I can add to my illness resume that I have survived being sick in Russia.

Monday morning, I woke up, after insufficient sleep, with a sore throat sufficiently nasty that I called my school and told them to cancel my classes for the day. This was somewhat awkward to do, as it was not clear to whom I should make such a call, and as there was almost non one in at the time I called. I did, however, leave a message with a secretary at our central school and attempted to dial the cell phone of a Russian woman who is my director of studies, a woman I shall call Irina. As Irina did not pick up, I assumed she was on the Metro headed into work, decided I would call her a little later, and went back to sleep.

Less than ten minutes later, Irina called. I informed her of my illness and asked if she was the right person to call. She was as unclear on this point as I was but told me not to worry about it--she would make sure that the right person was informed and that my classes for the day were cancelled. Pleased as I could be under the circumstances (who can really be pleased about a crippling sore throat?), I drifted off to dreamland.

By mid-afternoon, I felt a bit better and went down to our central school to talk to a few other teachers (as best I could) and have at least some human contact for the day. I had thought that I was feeling better, but, as these things tend to happen, in the night I felt much worse. By 7:00 the following morning, when I called Irina again, I had thrown up three times.

Far from being annoyed at being disturbed so early two days in a row, Irina was as helpful as humanly possible. She said she could tell I really sounded sick and, when I said I needed to see a doctor, told me she would find one for me. At 10:00 (about as early as could be expected, given when work generally starts in our company), she called me back and gave me the name of a doctor and the address of her clinic. I promptly called and made an appointment for early that afternoon.

I suppose it's a credit to my Russian studies that I somehow managed to handle this phone call, but it seemed like hard going getting the receptionist to understand me when I tried to give my insurance information and asked what time I could come in. But eventually the appointment was made, and at 3:00 that afternoon, I walked into a clinic near the Lubyanka.

I went down a door marked "Registration" and let the same Russian receptionist I had spoken to earlier take my information all over again. She seemed surprised, though, when I gave her the name of the doctor Irina had given me. She said I could not see this doctor, for one simple reason:

The doctor in question was a gynecologist.

The receptionist did, however, agree to send me off to another doctor and told me to go two floors up, which I did. After two hours of waiting, I was at last examined by two women doctors who spoke hardly any English. For a while, we tried going back and forth with a dictionary, until it became clear that the questions they needed an answer to were beyond what they could do even with a Pocket Oxford. They called in a male colleague who spoke English better, who asked me a few questions and told me to come up for a further examination when I was through with them.

The women prescribed three medications for me, which they said would be easy to obtain at any apteka (the Russian equivalent of a drugstore). They told me I had the flu and should try to go home and rest. I thanked them and went upstairs to the other doctor, who felt around my abdomen. He agreed with the diagnosis of his colleagues and said I had nothing requiring surgery.

I made my way to the nearest apteka and purchased what I had been prescribed. As I was leaving, I heard the beeping noise from my cell phone I have come to recognize as an incoming text message (Russians are keen on text messaging even in professional contexts because the messages are cheaper than an actual cell phone call). It was my school, alterting me that my classes for the next day had been cancelled and wishing me a speedy recovery.

Being ill is never fun. But I would say that, all in all, this experience compared favorably with being ill in Taiwan. My school dealt with the situation professionally and, it seemed, with genuine concern for my welfare, something I did not experience with Eve and Ruby. Today, feeling somewhat better, I went in for my afternoon Russian lesson. There, I got into a conversation with another teacher who had heard I had been unwell. He told me that, if I needed to see a doctor again, the school had Russian staff who could accompany me. I had not even thought to ask for this, independent as I am, but if I end up needing a doctor again soon, I can avoid some of the hassle of relying on a pocket dictionary to explain medical symptoms.

And, I hope, avoid the possibility of being sent to a gynecologist.