I am used to being pretty healthy. I had a minor operation on my big toe yesterday - sounds ludicrous, doesn't it? - and I realized that it was the first time I was in a hospital for any kind of treatment since I was ten, the end of the summer of 1954, when I broke my leg very seriously.
The operation was to remove a lumpy thing from my toe, not a tumor, because it had begun to be painful, and the bureaucracy was more formidable than the operation itself. First I had to get an appointment with an orthopedist who specializes in the foot, and his first available appointment, when I called in early May, was in late June. To get my health fund to pay for the visit, I had to obtain a large number of documents, and when the time finally came for my appointment, I ended up being seen at twelve-thirty or so, although I'd been called for two hours earlier.
The consultation was at Hadassah Hospital in Ein Kerem, a huge, labyrinthine factory of a hospital, which has been on the verge of bankruptcy for several years. As I wandered through the halls, looking for the orthopedic outpatient clinic, I could only think of all the parts of one's body that can stop working. Not only was I made aware of how many of one's bodily organs can break down, but I saw hundreds of worried people in the corridors. Almost all my recent visits to Hadassah were for the births of my grandchildren, and everyone in the Mother and Child building looked pretty happy.
Once I saw the doctor, and he agreed that I needed an operation, I had to run another bureaucratic gauntlet. Even though the operation was minor, on an outpatient basis, I had to have a complicated blood test, an ECG, an ultra-sound on my foot, and a chest x-ray.
So my wife drove me to Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus yesterday morning at 7:30, and of course I was fasting. I also hadn't slept well the night before, though I wasn't aware of being nervous about the operation.
Dozens of people gathered in the surgical outpatient department, including quite a few parents with young children, mainly Palestinians. We also bumped into some people we knew. Again there was bureaucracy and a lot of waiting around. My turn in the operating room didn't come until around 11:30. I was pretty hungry and thirsty by then.
What's astonishing about the hospital is the way Jews and Arabs mix without visible tension.. Doctors, nurses, patients, and workers can be all native speakers of Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, English, or what have you. The anesthesiologist who numbed me was Palestinian, one of the nurses was Russian, one of the physicians was also Russian, and one of them was, I think, English.
Today the nurse at the health fund who changed the bandage on my toe was a young Armenian woman from the Old City. If only we could live together outside of the hospital the way we do inside it, life in this country would be closer to tolerable.
I imagine I'll be seeing a lot more of hospitals as I speed along from being old to being very old (or dead), and I'm not looking forward to it.
The operation was to remove a lumpy thing from my toe, not a tumor, because it had begun to be painful, and the bureaucracy was more formidable than the operation itself. First I had to get an appointment with an orthopedist who specializes in the foot, and his first available appointment, when I called in early May, was in late June. To get my health fund to pay for the visit, I had to obtain a large number of documents, and when the time finally came for my appointment, I ended up being seen at twelve-thirty or so, although I'd been called for two hours earlier.
The consultation was at Hadassah Hospital in Ein Kerem, a huge, labyrinthine factory of a hospital, which has been on the verge of bankruptcy for several years. As I wandered through the halls, looking for the orthopedic outpatient clinic, I could only think of all the parts of one's body that can stop working. Not only was I made aware of how many of one's bodily organs can break down, but I saw hundreds of worried people in the corridors. Almost all my recent visits to Hadassah were for the births of my grandchildren, and everyone in the Mother and Child building looked pretty happy.
Once I saw the doctor, and he agreed that I needed an operation, I had to run another bureaucratic gauntlet. Even though the operation was minor, on an outpatient basis, I had to have a complicated blood test, an ECG, an ultra-sound on my foot, and a chest x-ray.
So my wife drove me to Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus yesterday morning at 7:30, and of course I was fasting. I also hadn't slept well the night before, though I wasn't aware of being nervous about the operation.
Dozens of people gathered in the surgical outpatient department, including quite a few parents with young children, mainly Palestinians. We also bumped into some people we knew. Again there was bureaucracy and a lot of waiting around. My turn in the operating room didn't come until around 11:30. I was pretty hungry and thirsty by then.
What's astonishing about the hospital is the way Jews and Arabs mix without visible tension.. Doctors, nurses, patients, and workers can be all native speakers of Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, English, or what have you. The anesthesiologist who numbed me was Palestinian, one of the nurses was Russian, one of the physicians was also Russian, and one of them was, I think, English.
Today the nurse at the health fund who changed the bandage on my toe was a young Armenian woman from the Old City. If only we could live together outside of the hospital the way we do inside it, life in this country would be closer to tolerable.
I imagine I'll be seeing a lot more of hospitals as I speed along from being old to being very old (or dead), and I'm not looking forward to it.
1 comment:
Hope your toe heals quickly, and your patience at Israeli bureaucracy increases. Imagine if you had a more serious emergency. Your observation of the ethnic,national, religious mix in a hospital setting is important. So there may be hope for the interaction among healthy Israelis and Palestinians. I am less optimistic. See my new book Israeli Society in the 21st Century: Immigration, Inequality and Religious Conflict, the cumulative report of several decades of my research. Warm regards and refuah shlemah. Calvin
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