Health "Care"

March 31, 2006

Mel is ill this morning. It started last night and it’s probably just a nasty little head cold, aggravated by spring allergies. Even so, it always worries me when he gets sick. I’m always concerned about his blood sugar levels going way out of whack. So far this morning, after a fever that broke in the night, he seems to be doing a lot better. His blood sugar was normal this morning, not high like it gets when he is really ill.

This is one area where I have had a hard time trusting God. It is strange – I trust God pretty well with our health while we are in the States. Or, at least I thought I was trusting God - maybe I am finding out that I was really trusting the American medical system! That’s more than a little scary!

The medical system here in Ukraine is an on-going nightmare to me. I hear the stories people tell and I remember our own experiences with it and I wonder how anyone has survived it to even tell their stories! Just yesterday one of the women in the Bible study was asking prayer for her nephew. He was badly burned in an accident at work, late at night. To get to the hospital HE had to call a taxi (I’m not sure of the details, but apparently the ambulance refused or wasn’t available?). The taxi driver took him to the hospital (everyone was amazed – the driver refused to take any money!). Then, to add another black eye to the medical profession (read – socialized medicine), when the burn began to itch a couple days later, the nephew asked the doctor if he should put an ointment on it, and the doctor replied: “you can do whatever you like. You can lick it if you want, or you can get a rock off the street and scratch it.” I have no doubt that this story is true. I’ve seen and heard too much, even from those in the medical field, to think that someone just made the story up.

I have had four “run ins” with the medical field myself. The “fun time” I had with the dentist is for another journal entry, as is the time I fell and dislocated my shoulder. But the other two are short enough I can put them into one entry.

I discovered a lump in my breast during our first three years here in Ukraine. I found out from friends in Kiev about the American Medical Center located there, so I made an appointment with the gynecologist to have an exam. I really liked this doctor and I would go back to her again at any time. After examining me, she determined that I needed a mammogram, so she made an appointment for me at a local hospital. In the States when I’ve had a mammogram, the office is staffed by women, the person who does the mammogram is a woman, and everything is nice and quiet and designed to put me at my ease. In Kiev, I sat on a flimsy theater style chair out in a busy, dimly lit hallway with a couple dozen other people, both men and women, waiting to be called into one of the side rooms. Once inside, I was instructed by a man to take my blouse and bra off – no private room with a little cupboard to put my belongings in, just take it off right there. Then, he and two other people, one of whom was a woman (yea!), did the exam. While I was stuck in the machine (a brand new Siemens mammogram machine!), I was treated to three or four Xeroxed comics taped right there before my eyes – comics of male anatomy being squashed in a mammogram machine. Very interesting. Afterward I was examined by one of the men, then shown the white spot/lump on the x-ray. He circled it with a black marker and gave the x-ray to me to take home. I was instructed to have a mammogram once a month from then on. When I protested that we don’t have them that often in the States, he looked at me and asked, very seriously, “Don’t you value your health?” I wanted to sit down and laugh hysterically and then burst into tears. Of course I value my health – that’s why I don’t have a mammogram once a month! I sent the x-ray to a gynecologist in the States and he determined the lump was nothing to be concerned about, I just needed to schedule a mammogram in another couple of years. When we were in the States the next time, my mammogram came up clear.

I guess our first three years in Ukraine were hard on our bodies. One day I woke up and after putting in my contacts I realized I had a funny line in my vision. I took the contacts out again and cleaned them, but the line was still there. I started getting scared. I have had bad eyesight since I was a little child. It has something to do with being born breech and then being given oxygen immediately after birth. Apparently the oxygen damaged my eyes and I am very nearsighted. My eyes have only grown worse over the years and I’ve always had a fear of eventually going blind. Back in the early 1990’s I had a new kind of surgery to repair a torn macula in the retina of my right eye. The surgery was successful, but my eyesight was permanently damaged by the tear and I have very little vision in that eye now. Well, this new line was in my left eye. It was a different thing than a tear in the retina – I’d had several small tears that required cryosurgery or laser repair, in addition to the more serious macula repair, and I was well aware of what those symptoms are. I started looking up information on the internet and did a self-diagnosis of “vitreous detachment.” The articles I read on that indicated that a tear in the retina could occur during a vitreous detachment, so I immediately called the American Medical Center for an examination.

After a long overnight train ride to Kiev and then a ride on the metro to the AMC, I was examined by a doctor. He determined that I needed to go to the special eye clinic in another district of Kiev. This clinic is the number one, top of the line, eye specialist clinic in all of Ukraine. It was a very interesting examination. After filling out some paper work with the help of someone from the AMC, Mel and I waited in a little room until called. Mel came with me – I did not want to go alone. I was taken into a very large room with several machines sitting around. The attendant took me to the first machine and my exam began. I can’t even begin to remember all of the machines and all of the tests they did. I do remember very well, though, one test that was done. They put something on my eye, a lens of some sort and I started to panic. My eye was actually stuck to that machine. It was all I could do to keep from trying to jerk away and start screaming in panic. I actually started making panic noises and hitting my hand on my leg and the person doing the exam told me to shut up and stop it. During the test for glaucoma, I asked the examiner if I had a vitreous detachment. The person had no clue what I was trying to ask. That was fun. How do describe something like that? I finally said something like, “Is there a problem with the ‘water’ in my eye?” I went into as much detail as I could trying to describe what I meant. No one could see anything wrong. But oh, everyone was VERY interested in my other eye! The right eye was examined very thoroughly. A couple people came over to look at it, to examine the results of the surgery I had had in that eye. I was asked to describe what my ophthalmologist in the States had done. No one was concerned with my left eye at all. I left the exam no wiser – did I have a vitreous detachment or not? All I knew was that my right eye was very interesting but that no one seemed to care at all that I had a problem in my left eye.

When we were home in the States one of my first appointments was with my ophthalmologist. He began the examination and the very first thing he said was, “Oh, I see you had a vitreous detachment! Let’s see if there was any damage to the retina.”