Staying Healthy

December 11, 2008

From Lithuanian Heritage May/June 2008

I’ll be the first to admit that my experience in Lithuania is not as “Lithuanian” as it could be.  I’m usually out of town on the major holidays, I don’t watch Lithuanian television, and in this ever-more cosmopolitan city of Vilnius I surround myself with a circle of friends made up of an international group of ex-pats, with only a few Lithuanians thrown into the mix, most of whom have recently returned from living abroad themselves.  Saturday mornings are often spent sipping lattes and eating ham and cheese crêpes (covered in sour cream of course) at a café on Pilies g. in the senamiestis (old town).  This week though, I did one of the most “Lithuanian” things I’ve ever done: I went to the hospital.  My injury, which turned out to be more scary than serious, came about one sunny Tuesday morning as I was sitting at my desk, just beginning to contemplate writing this article.  A yawn, a stretch, a pop in my neck and my friend was rushing over to take me to the hospital, which is where this article really begins.

We must have gone in the wrong door because the young woman sitting behind the small glass window had to look up in the computer where we should go for head and neck injuries.  It wasn’t long though before she checked me in and directed us towards room 44 – traumatology.  In the dimly lit hall we waited with a couple of other patients, one an elderly woman on a gurney, who was being rolled around by an equally elderly relative.  We admired the cheap art on the wall and the irony of the ATM machine in the lobby; I guess it is there so that you can pay cash for whatever your sodre (social security) doesn’t cover.  One of the most striking differences between this hospital, and one you might find in the United States or Western Europe, is that it didn’t look like a hospital.  It wasn’t white, the floors were a dark granite and the walls a dingy peach.  It smelled more like a trolleybus – a pungent combination of sweat and urine – than the overly sterile smell one usually associates with hospitals, and there was no immediate sign of medical equipment, just a maze of short hallways lined with closed numbered doors.

The patient before me was finished so I stepped into the office past a nurse with a scowl on her face.  The room was bright, with big windows and walls painted yellow.  In the center behind a small, white desk sat a middle-aged doctor wearing a bow tie; an unfriendly nurse at the end of the table.  Two more nurses stood quietly on either side of me.  Finally the doctor who didn’t even bother to take a look at my check-in papers simply said, “Tai, ka?” (Loosely translated as, “So?”)  I explained to him what happened, and without even standing up to have a look, he told me he would write a prescription for the pain.  I suggested that maybe I should be examined first, something he himself was evidently not prepared to do.  Eventually he gave in to my protests and stormed off down the hall; a few minutes later another scowling nurse came in and took me to wait outside an empty neurologist’s office.  When he finally arrived this doctor was friendly, interested and empathetic; he did an exam, ordered an x-ray and assured me that he would be waiting when I came back with my results.

I was not seriously hurt and I was treated by a very kind doctor who took the time to make an informed diagnosis, but I won’t be going to the state hospital again having made a definite decision to purchase extra health insurance and use the modern private hospitals, of which there are several here in Vilnius.  I don’t know much about the health care system in Lithuania, having had little need for it before.  I’ve been told that all of the best doctors work at both the private and public clinics, the theory being that it doesn’t make sense to pay the private fees when our sodre will pay for us to meet the same doctors in a different office.  The real difference though, is not the modernity of the building, it is the time wasted with the lesser doctors in the traumatology room who are willing to write a prescription without even getting up from their desk, just to send the patient on their way.

Until I get around to buying insurance, I’ll have to focus on staying healthy.  The weather is warm now and tourists are taking over the Senamiestis (Old Town); Saturdays will soon be spent riding bikes the forest, rowing a boat on the lake or swimming in the sea.  Cutting down on the sour cream covered pancakes will help too.

Filed under: Daily Life,Lithuania

Tags: clips, doctor, hospital, Lithuanian Heritage, medical system, medicine, Vilnius