While studying in Italy at the Tuscia
University, I started to feel sick and thought I may have a sinus infection
because I was living in an apartment where mold was growing on the brick
ceiling, I was allergic to mold and had the symptoms of sinus pain and ear
pain.
I told Frankie, the Italian lady of
USAC in charge of housing and other “problems”, about my dilemma. She gave me a
doctors name and asked if I needed directions and for her to come along to help
translate. “Of course,” I exclaimed. The Italians in Viterbo do not speak much English
at all. Some of them speak a little. I thought the doctor would probably be one
of the “little English” speakers.
So Frankie and I made the journey
through a neighborhood outside the city walls, past yellow and faded orange
homes and apartments, across the weedy sidewalks to a three-story building.
“It’s on the second floor,” she said.
There was no elevator. So we climbed the steep steps. I imagined a really sick
person trying to see the doctor and climbing all those stairs. No ADA here, I
thought.
We walked past a small cubbyhole, with
a white folding door that looked like a bookkeeper desk. We walked into a room
that had green walls and orange chairs. It was a waiting room.
Frankie said, “I need to get the key.”
I was trying to figure out why she needed a key, when she returned, unlocked a non-descript
door in the room, and behind the door was a bathroom that was stuffed in a
broom closet space.
I walked around the waiting room
looking at all of the hand sketches of Rome that were placed behind glass in 3
X 5 inch wood frames. All the frames were closely spaced apart at the same
level in the room across the four walls.
The doctor passed the hallway with a slim
woman with long wavy brown hair following him, walked into his office with her
and closed the door. Frankie said, “Oh, they’ll be in there for awhile”.
So we waited. I again was wondering
how she knew that. I remember the same lady discussing something standing
around the cubbyhole reception desk as we passed by. Maybe Frankie overheard
her conversation?
Then after a while the door opened to
the doctors office and the lady stepped out, and the doctor followed her. He
then motioned to Frankie and me to come into his office, and sit in the chairs
facing his desk.
The doctor was wearing a pressed blue
striped shirt and grey pants, had salt and pepper wavy hair, and parted to the
side. He was over 6 feet tall, large for an Italian, I thought. We saw an old, worn,
large wood desk in the center of the room, and tall windows on the back wall
that illuminated the room. A white, mini refrigerator stood to the side of the
desk near our seats piled with small white boxes. The doctor motioned for us to
sit down. Frankie and I took our seats in front of the desk. Our chairs looked
like they had once belonged to a formal dining room set, light blue crushed
velvet pads that sagged when we sat on them.
I noticed a very unstable white vinyl-padded
table with small metal legs and a paper sheet draped over it sitting the corner
near my chair. I wondered what it was for, especially if he asked us to sit
down, instead of asking me to sit on the table, like they do in the U.S.
The doctor took his seat behind his desk. He
said “hello” in English. Then Frankie told him what my symptoms were. She said,
“he is learning English and is taking a class, but he can only say Hello,
Goodbye and Thank you.”
HIPA rules went right out the window. Oh
wait, this is Italy.
He pulled a small black tool thing
with a small light on it out of his pocket. He walked around the desk and faced
me. He spoke some Italian. I looked at Frankie. She said, “he wants to check
your ears since you are complaining of ear pain.” I said O.K. So he puts the
pointed black thing in my ear with the light and looks in. He is pressing it so
hard against my ear canal that the pointy black thing starts hurting. I backed
up in my chair, so he got the idea that it was painful.
Then he took the light and told me to
say ah, except of course in Italian, but his gestured an open mouth with his
tongue out. So I did what he said and he looked in my mouth. No tongue
compress? Never mind.
Then he said some words to Frankie,
and she said, “Now bend over”. “What!” I exclaimed. “He wants you to bend over”
she said. “No!” I said
I stood up. She looked at me, then the
doctor, then back at me. “He wants you to bend over and touch your toes.” “I
can’t touch my toes!” I said. The doctor
was now standing behind me. I had a quick internal conversation with myself
“O.K. he wants you to bend over, he is standing behind you. Well Frankie is
here and she wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”
So I thought, O.K. let’s see what
happens. So I bent over, with my head bent forward and my shoulders bent
forward. “Bend over more”, she said. The doctor was still standing behind me.
So I bent over more. Then she said I could stand up again. The doctor spoke to
her in Italian, and she then said, “How does your face feel?” I said, “It
hurts!” Then she told the doctor and he spoke, then she said, “Yes you have a
sinus infection.” Really, no kidding!
Then he wrote me a prescription for
some decongestant, but no antibiotics. He said I could get those when I returned.
I still had two weeks left to go in Italy, so I was not fond of the idea. I
protested, but I could see it was going nowhere. It appeared that the doctor’s
decision is final in Italy.
Then I looked at the prescription and
said, “I could not find a pharmacy that was open. It’s Friday yet none were
open. All of them had a sign on the door saying there was some type of audit
going on.”
“Ah, yes”, said Frankie, “they are on
strike today.” “What!” I said. “Yes”, Frankie said. The government was trying
to add an additional tax on the pharmacies, so the workers went on strike”.
“When will they be off strike?” I asked. She could not say, but it should only
be for a couple of days.
So I looked at the doctor and Frankie,
and said, “so what will I do?” Frankie spoke to the doctor in Italian, and then
he started lifting, reading and looking through the small boxes, first the ones
in his desk drawer, then the ones on the back credenza. I realized they were
sample prescription drugs. Then he walked around us to the small, white
refrigerator and looked through the boxes on the fridge in frustration.
Then he left the office and I could
hear him riffling through more boxes in the front cubbyhole office. Then he
came back with a package with two powdery filled vials. He spoke to Frankie and
then she said to me “take these for two days, then maybe the pharmacy will be
open”. I said ok.
Then he spoke to her and she said, “Your
fee will be 50 Euros, if you get a receipt, and 20 euros if you don’t get a
receipt”.
I was so shocked I had to ask again,
“You mean if I pay 20, I walk out with no receipt, and if I pay 50 I get a
receipt?”
My financial mind was clicking away as
I imagined what a high tax rate this doctor probably had to be offering
services on a cash basis, under the table. Also, I knew I could get reimbursed
for the fee if I submitted a receipt to my insurance company.
I asked for the receipt, and I watched
as the doctor frowned and made out a paper receipt.
We then got up and walked out, down
the steep stairs and across the neighborhood.
I said to Frankie, “what was that
white table for?” She said, “Oh, he also does gynecology.”
Then it occurred to me what the
patient in his office before me had to endure!
I wondered how many “specialties” a
doctor can have in Italy. And I also pondered how often doctors had to update
their medical certifications. Can any doctor say, “Now I do orthopedic surgery?”
So I asked Frankie what her doctor
does for his patients, “Oh, he is a regular doctor, but he also performs
physical therapy for his patients”.
I imagined some young, Italian, med
students standing around a dartboard. “What will your specialty be, Mario?”
Mario throws a dart at the dartboard, and hits a piece of paper with the words
‘Ophthalmology’ on it. “Great, Mario, you’ll practice ophthalmology!”
The powdery white stuff that I had to
mix with peach tea tasted awful, but it worked.
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