Whirlwind week

So one of the negatives of living overseas is lack of access to healthcare at an American level. Don’t get me wrong, we do have a great medical office here at the Embassy, but they just don’t have the facilities and equipment to handle everything. The State Department compensates for this by paying for medical evacuations when it is deemed necessary. Last week I had my first experience as a medical evacuee.

Before I go further, I will state that I am fine. Honestly. I know that the word “evacuation” causes all sorts of images of me on a stretcher being taken out of Ukraine by Marine helicopter (at least it does in my head), but it was nothing like that. My medical condition was not life-threatening, or even really an emergency. It was just something that needed to be checked out before April 2009, so medevac was the way to go. And for the sake of not sharing too much personal information online, that’s all I’m going to say about my health.

But I will share more details about the experience itself. It was probably one of the craziest weeks of my life. I left Kyiv Monday morning, landed in DC Monday evening, and hit the ground running. I had appointments and testing all day Tuesday and part of the day Wednesday, results were determined by the end of the day Thursday, and I was “cleared” to return to post on Friday (although my return flight was on Monday morning). It was a confusing time of explaining and re-explaining my situation. I had never had an experience with a teaching hospital before, so since all my appointments were at The George Washington University, I got to see the whole intern system in action.

I think my favorite (and I’m laughing only after the fact) intern experience was the one I had at my ophthalmologist appointment. She was very thorough, yet somehow completely lacking in bedside manner. Things came to a head when she was checking the pressure in my eyes. In the past, I’ve always had that done with the weird puff-of-air machine. But in this case, she numbed my eyes and then moved an apparatus in to actually touch my eye. Gross, I know. However, Intern didn’t mention what she was doing in advance and suddenly I realized that my eyes were feeling really funny and something is moving toward them…and getting too close. So I start blinking like crazy - she starts yelling at me that I’m “only going to make it hurt worse” (clearly indicating to me that she plans on causing me pain) - and I finally hear myself shout “What is that thing and what are you doing?!” After Intern took all of 30 seconds to explain what was going on, I was fine, of course. For the sake of her future patients, I hope she learned a small lesson. Oh, and when the real doctor came in the room, she rattled off about 5 things she had found wrong with my eyes. It took the doctor about 2 minutes to determine that there wasn’t anything wrong with them and I stumbled out into the sun, traumatized and with dilated pupils.

So between all the appointments and general craziness of the week, I soaked up some serious American culture. My mom came to spend a few days with me and, let’s say, “over-encouraged” my shopping habit. I was like one of those people on StyleTV that they give the credit card to and tell them to buy a new wardrobe. Unfortunately, unlike the show, I have to pay off my credit card. In my defense, I was in need to new clothes and I now know how lacking my options are in Kyiv. (I prefer to be able to sit down in my skirts.) Additionally, I got to eat at several of my favorite restaurants and saw 4 movies (Harry Potter, Superbad, Nanny Diaries, and Stardust).

So after a week’s diversion, and over 5,000 frequent flier miles, it’s back to real life - loads of laundry and walking a dog that seemed to get a little wilder in my absence. Only 5 more months until our R and R vacation….