Take a Deep Breath or Why do I know the Russian word for enema?

Turns out that this year in order to attend camp at Gurino (pronounced Gooreena) we have to prove that we don’t have TB. So Jim, Sally, Amy and I all had to get chest x-rays. We were told that we’d have to strip down from the waist up and wait in a room with others until it was our turn to be x-rayed. So of course, Amy was immediately nervous ‘cause it’s strange enough to be in a foreign country, let alone parade around naked over half your body. We started to make a joke of it, and asked Dad if He could do something about it.

Turns out, that we not only didn’t wait three or four hours, but that we were done with the whole procedure in about 40 minutes. Yes! All four of us! Here’s the basic procedure of Russian hospitals.

1) go into the hospital and buy little booties to keep the floor clean (it was raining)
2) climb stairs to fourth floor to wait in line to get slip for x-ray
3) go back to first floor with slip and wait in 2 different lines (one to get your hospital ID number and one to pay) We were with Zhanna, the CEC interpreter – so we were set because she knows the system. We had people waiting in both lines!
4) go back up to fourth floor and wait in line again for your x-ray. Turns out it was a fluoroscope.
5) go wait for the guy who looks at the x-ray and says everything’s ok
6) go get your car and drive about 1/2 mile to another building to get a stamp on your x-ray that proves it’s yours
7) you’re done!

I’m still in the honeymoon phase, so the extra time and extra lines are all okay. And I keep learning new words and phrases along the way.

So why do I know the word for enema? Because Jim was telling us about an American who had come here to visit and ended up a little too constipated and had to get an enema. Jim decided that he’d make sure he didn’t have to go to the hospital for that, so he learned how to say the word so he could purchase one at the pharmacy if he needed one… I don’t think it’s quite as funny written out – but four Americans talking about an enema openly in the hallway of a Russian hospital really is a funny sight.