The winter cold is upon us. As I breathe a sigh of relief that the heat has dissipated, my warm breath on an icy pane, fogs it. Clearing away the dirt, I peer outwards, looking at my life from beyond the fish bowl.
The travel bug isn’t a bug, it’s inherent in the endeavouring human. A bug can be cured. The desire to adventure is a yearning for experience, for chance meetings and off-the-wall episodes.
I’m not travelling at the moment but still the extra ordinary finds me.
Thrilled by the unknown, thrilled by the opportunity to tell a story, this is the Bear Hunters life.
This could end in disaster and it could end in relief, but either way, I have a story to tell.
Waking up to an ear muffled, with only the hum of white noise, no amount of ear-budding or digging was dislodging the problem. It was inevitable that I’d have to visit an ENT.
With the aromatic scent of brewed coffee filling the entrance, the fresh air and daylight flooding the hospitals innards and the de-clinicalised environment, the unhospital like hospital at Linksfield Clinic welcomed me. To here, I wasn’t a fearful visitor.
The travel bug isn’t a bug, it’s inherent in the endeavouring human. A bug can be cured. The desire to adventure is a yearning for experience, for chance meetings and off-the-wall episodes.
I’m not travelling at the moment but still the extra ordinary finds me.
Thrilled by the unknown, thrilled by the opportunity to tell a story, this is the Bear Hunters life.
This could end in disaster and it could end in relief, but either way, I have a story to tell.
Waking up to an ear muffled, with only the hum of white noise, no amount of ear-budding or digging was dislodging the problem. It was inevitable that I’d have to visit an ENT.
With the aromatic scent of brewed coffee filling the entrance, the fresh air and daylight flooding the hospitals innards and the de-clinicalised environment, the unhospital like hospital at Linksfield Clinic welcomed me. To here, I wasn’t a fearful visitor.
Having probed and tapped and buzzed and bee-bopped, the doc suggested the MRI scan.
‘Gsus, can’t you just give me a pill, and let me be on my way?’I thought. In conversation with my own brain, I continued to think, “whoa, I’ve only ever come ‘in contact’ with the MRI on a colour teevee show”.
Now I’m told I need to undergo one.
Heading down stairs to radiology, I asked how much this’d cost. In silence, she scrawled on the lined paper, R16 400.00. Blurting out an expletive, chocking back the tears in disbelief, I said ‘but I, I, I’m only on a Hospital Plan’.
I was caught between Iraq and a hard place.(well, not really, I didn’t have a spare R16k lying around)
The adventure began when the doctor said, ‘National Geographic (name of health company changed for purposes) won’t allow you to be booked in for an MRI, but what we could do is have you come to Edenvale Hospital where I locum. Expect to spend the morning waiting for you’ll see how the other half live’. ‘hehehe’, I nervously giggled.
I arrived at Edenvale Hospital in my private-owned car, and parked in the empty, potholed lot.
I entered through the emergency room doors. Greeted by the wails of a poor girl strapped to a wheely bed bawling her eyes out and the heaviness of the trauma room, I sought ‘reception’.
The receptionist, his finger directed me to the ENT department. Like a yolk-yellow canary I stood out in a sea of gray scale.
With a private education, a tertiary degree, a life of overseas journeying, and country club membership, I was simply another citizen seeking medical care at the expense of the State. Though I’ve spent everything on a private medical aid, I’m lead to believe it’s given me nothing. Ordered to pull a file, ordered to state my monthly income, my air time expenditure, food and clothing spend, ordered to be seated, ordered to linger for my name to be called, the waiting game began. Me, the brown grey of the prison guards, the horror-orange of the imprisoned- shackled and sounding like loose change, the Sari’d Indian, the Asterix comic-reading engelsman and the poverty stricken masses, they sat seated waiting for a doctor.
Not far from soft suburbia, I was exposing myself to a harsh new world.
Now, with my referral letter to Johannesburg General, I headed there the next day. Johannesburg General Hospital, a monolith, a brutalist edifice sitting atop its perch, it’s beacon the red and white stripped chimney announcing it’s purpose. Parked, I did in the cold exposed lot-the ‘grand’ entrance to the hospital. The wide hallways and coloured ‘block’ indicators, the stream of people, pyjama- laden inmates attached to IV’s morbidly hovering along the crème linoleum floors, doctors in scrubs and flip charts, this was extra-planetary.
Finding the ENT department I booked in. 3 Doctors check-up patients in one room. There is no oak table or early century drawers, there’s no air-con or views onto golf courses. There’s no lollipop jar or human anatomy pop-up books, but there was thorough assistance, exemplary care. The doctor ordered me an audiogram, not for R600, but as part of my tax-paying right, she ordered me a host of blood tests, and then sent me to radiology to set up a time for the into-the-future MRI scan.
The radiology division bunkered in tons of heavy concrete, has its low slung ceiling and dimmed fluorescent tube lighting affecting a harrowing, dramatic experience. Natural delight, natural light is left outside behind these 13 inch walls. The tepid blue palette and the misery of people isn’t even a scene from a horror movie. It’s a reality. As I stood waited at the MRI department a sad blimey, pasty, unscrubbed man in pin-stripe jammies, frail to death with flexi tube plugging up his nostril waited patiently with head in hands for his scan. I was approached to book my time. Flipping through the over-used crinkly diary, the assistant appointed me a time in January, yes, in January. In 8 months time. Our ‘world class’ African city and its hospital has one single MRI machine. ONE flipping MRI machine.
Having studied, and having visited the Paimio Sanitorium, a convalescence hospital for the war wounded just outside Turku in Finland designed by the great Fin Alvar Aalto, I recognise we are worlds away from being first world. Great, we have shiny glass buildings, and Zara, but do we have efficient, democratic public transport, do we have health care, do we have social security, do we have a city free from crime, do we have more than one MRI machine?. That, would be World Class.
Aalto’s design ensures that natural daylight is necessary for recovery of patients, the design offers outdoor recover areas, landscaping, and vibrant colour palettes. It offers basins that help in reducing water splashing noises, and lighting fixtures that avoid directly pulverising the resting patient.
The Johannesburg General Hospital ain’t no architectural masterpiece, nor will it appear in a glossy architectural magazine, but the people labouring there, the human resource taking care of the wounded, thoroughly investigating, were exemplary.
Doctors and nurses. Changing worlds, effecting lives. Thank G-d for community service.
For some unknown reason I bring adventure upon me, getting into the crevices of life. May I continue to do so in safety and health. From the roar of the Russian Bear Hunter, argh grr raaahh
‘Gsus, can’t you just give me a pill, and let me be on my way?’I thought. In conversation with my own brain, I continued to think, “whoa, I’ve only ever come ‘in contact’ with the MRI on a colour teevee show”.
Now I’m told I need to undergo one.
Heading down stairs to radiology, I asked how much this’d cost. In silence, she scrawled on the lined paper, R16 400.00. Blurting out an expletive, chocking back the tears in disbelief, I said ‘but I, I, I’m only on a Hospital Plan’.
I was caught between Iraq and a hard place.(well, not really, I didn’t have a spare R16k lying around)
The adventure began when the doctor said, ‘National Geographic (name of health company changed for purposes) won’t allow you to be booked in for an MRI, but what we could do is have you come to Edenvale Hospital where I locum. Expect to spend the morning waiting for you’ll see how the other half live’. ‘hehehe’, I nervously giggled.
I arrived at Edenvale Hospital in my private-owned car, and parked in the empty, potholed lot.
I entered through the emergency room doors. Greeted by the wails of a poor girl strapped to a wheely bed bawling her eyes out and the heaviness of the trauma room, I sought ‘reception’.
The receptionist, his finger directed me to the ENT department. Like a yolk-yellow canary I stood out in a sea of gray scale.
With a private education, a tertiary degree, a life of overseas journeying, and country club membership, I was simply another citizen seeking medical care at the expense of the State. Though I’ve spent everything on a private medical aid, I’m lead to believe it’s given me nothing. Ordered to pull a file, ordered to state my monthly income, my air time expenditure, food and clothing spend, ordered to be seated, ordered to linger for my name to be called, the waiting game began. Me, the brown grey of the prison guards, the horror-orange of the imprisoned- shackled and sounding like loose change, the Sari’d Indian, the Asterix comic-reading engelsman and the poverty stricken masses, they sat seated waiting for a doctor.
Not far from soft suburbia, I was exposing myself to a harsh new world.
Now, with my referral letter to Johannesburg General, I headed there the next day. Johannesburg General Hospital, a monolith, a brutalist edifice sitting atop its perch, it’s beacon the red and white stripped chimney announcing it’s purpose. Parked, I did in the cold exposed lot-the ‘grand’ entrance to the hospital. The wide hallways and coloured ‘block’ indicators, the stream of people, pyjama- laden inmates attached to IV’s morbidly hovering along the crème linoleum floors, doctors in scrubs and flip charts, this was extra-planetary.
Finding the ENT department I booked in. 3 Doctors check-up patients in one room. There is no oak table or early century drawers, there’s no air-con or views onto golf courses. There’s no lollipop jar or human anatomy pop-up books, but there was thorough assistance, exemplary care. The doctor ordered me an audiogram, not for R600, but as part of my tax-paying right, she ordered me a host of blood tests, and then sent me to radiology to set up a time for the into-the-future MRI scan.
The radiology division bunkered in tons of heavy concrete, has its low slung ceiling and dimmed fluorescent tube lighting affecting a harrowing, dramatic experience. Natural delight, natural light is left outside behind these 13 inch walls. The tepid blue palette and the misery of people isn’t even a scene from a horror movie. It’s a reality. As I stood waited at the MRI department a sad blimey, pasty, unscrubbed man in pin-stripe jammies, frail to death with flexi tube plugging up his nostril waited patiently with head in hands for his scan. I was approached to book my time. Flipping through the over-used crinkly diary, the assistant appointed me a time in January, yes, in January. In 8 months time. Our ‘world class’ African city and its hospital has one single MRI machine. ONE flipping MRI machine.
Having studied, and having visited the Paimio Sanitorium, a convalescence hospital for the war wounded just outside Turku in Finland designed by the great Fin Alvar Aalto, I recognise we are worlds away from being first world. Great, we have shiny glass buildings, and Zara, but do we have efficient, democratic public transport, do we have health care, do we have social security, do we have a city free from crime, do we have more than one MRI machine?. That, would be World Class.
Aalto’s design ensures that natural daylight is necessary for recovery of patients, the design offers outdoor recover areas, landscaping, and vibrant colour palettes. It offers basins that help in reducing water splashing noises, and lighting fixtures that avoid directly pulverising the resting patient.
The Johannesburg General Hospital ain’t no architectural masterpiece, nor will it appear in a glossy architectural magazine, but the people labouring there, the human resource taking care of the wounded, thoroughly investigating, were exemplary.
Doctors and nurses. Changing worlds, effecting lives. Thank G-d for community service.
For some unknown reason I bring adventure upon me, getting into the crevices of life. May I continue to do so in safety and health. From the roar of the Russian Bear Hunter, argh grr raaahh
