A Backwards Story about a Backwards Doctor's Visit

I stepped out of the cab, my husband handed me a bouquet of flowers, and I walked into the hospital to have my ultrasound. It went well, confirming what I already knew and nothing more and I was sent home with 3 ultrasound photos.

(5 minutes prior)

The cab driver couldn't break a 20 so to pay our fare Brock had to find the nearest item he could buy so we would have smaller bills, hence the floral arrangement.

(22 hours prior)

The male nurse present who was doing the translating for the doctor explained where to go the following day to have an ultrasound performed. The doctor wrote me a prescription and then uttered to me the only English words he seemed to know: "you pay me 20 leva for write this prescription." I handed him a 20, got no receipt from him, and realized I had actually paid him for writing me a prescription and nothing else. At least he's honest, but talk about a corrupt system!

(15 minutes prior)

The nurse gave me my diagnosis and also said I had too much sugar in my urine and that is bad, although this was subsequently not addressed. Perhaps the nurse had just had a donut for breakfast....

(20 minutes prior)

The male nurse who spoke some English handed me a cup to pee in without trying at all to avoid touching the inside of the cup with his bare (possibly sugary) hands. I walked into a dirty bathroom which was void of hand soap and void of that nice little door where you can discretely deposit your urine and walk out of the bathroom with some self-respect. No, I had to walk down the hall to the lab with my cup in hand in front of those waiting to use the bathroom. The lab nurse finally asked for my name, scribbled it down in Bulgarian on a scrap of paper and placed my urine cup on top of the paper and asked me for $4 to cover this part of the doctor's visit.

(5 minutes prior)

After following a nurse up and down the stairs a couple of times, she found the man she was looking for and she snatched my insurance card out of my hand. The two nurses read the card and noticed the part about my needing pre-approval before a surgery, cat scan, MRI, etc. Somehow this led them to believe I needed an MRI and they explained that I needed to take a cab to another facility to have this done. I reminded them of why I was here in the first place. They said I would then need a urine test and a blood test. I told them I was pretty sure just a urine sample would suffice, so they went to find a cup.

(20 minutes prior)

After following my landlord's not so perfect directions to a nearby clinic, I finally found it, entered, and asked if the receptionist spoke English (she did not), so she rounded up a nurse who did and I explained the reason I was there. She picked up the phone and called someone to explain very loudly and clearly in Bulgarian for all present to hear something about my being there that of course, I could not understand. There was no waiting room (just a couple of chairs), no weighing in, no taking temperature & blood pressure, no asking for the date of my last period, they didn't even ask for my phone number, the nurse just asked me to follow her.

(52 hours prior)

On a bus from Istanbul to Varna, I realized something was wrong with me. I felt worse and worse as we finally approached the bus station at 5:30am. I walked as fast as I could the mile or so home from the bus station, and for the next two days I hoped things would be ok and that I would not have to go to the doctor. I have never in all of my time spent overseas had to seek medical attention, and I sure didn't want to start in the country ranked 103 for health care, just above Iraq and just behind a couple of countries I have never heard of. Finally, I realized it was better to be safe and go get checked out.

In conclusion, I'm fine, thanks to the drugs I was sent home with. And I am definitely not pregnant, I just found it amusing how the circumstances could have been misconstrued as such. I figured that my story about such a backwards system deserves to be told backwards as well. I sincerely hope this was my first and last experience with the Bulgarian health system. The clinic resembled a very old home with skinny hallways and many small rooms. It was far from handicap accessible considering the steep and cracked six steps leading into the facility. Nothing about the place felt remotely sanitary. However, the staff was accommodating considering my inability to communicate in their language and they did do whatever they could to help me, albeit with plenty of confusion. In the end, I must say that the US health care system is looking pretty darn fabulous after this excursion.