Day 14 – 13th August – Osh (0km)

Two days after the accident, I finally got to see a doctor. I was lucky enough to have a health center right across the street from hostel, so that was teh first place I went to.

As expected, nobody spoke any English, but they pointed me to the door of a doctor’s office who invited me in without any queues or appointment. With a combination of gestures and Google Translate I explained what happened, and he made me take off my shirt and examined my back.

He then pointed at an X-ray he had on his table, and I understood that he wanted me to get one. The nurse was kind enough to write down the name and address of the main city hospital in a piece of paper, as well as the word for ‘X-ray’, and I got a taxi to take me there.

The hospital was a sprawling comlex with several buildings, but thanks to the piece of paper I had I now knew how to say X-ray in Russian, so it did not take long to find the right place. The entrance was a ramp that led one floor underground and from there and through corridors and stairways that looked more appropriate to missile launching facility in the middle of Siberia than a hospital, I found the X-ray section.

I did my mimics routine again and they immediately made me go in and took an X-ray of my left shoulder, which apparently revealed that nothing was broken or cracked. They gave me the X-ray and a medical report written in Russian and told me ‘kacca’ which is like ‘checkout’ or ‘till’, so I understood that’s where I had to pay.

I found the place on the first floor, showed them the X-ray and report and tried to make them understand that I wanted to pay for that. They seemed to discuss the situation for a while and then told me to just go without charging anything for it, so great service! If I had had the accident in the US they would have charged me 20,000$ or not even admitted me into hospital because language teachers are lowlives who don’t make enough money to pay for treatment.

Back at the clinic, the doctor was happy with the X-ray and the report, and through Google Translate again told me that I did not need to immobilise the arm or anything, he just prescribed some antiinflamatory pills and two injections in the butt, the old-fashioned way, and some rest. I had at least four more days until Marc got here, so that was perfect. There was a pharmacy right there in the clinic, the nurse helped me buy what I needed and then another nurse gave me the first injection. I was told to go back tomorrow for the second one. They would have just let me go like that, but I insisted on whether I had to pay something to the doctor, and in the end they charged me 200 soms, which is about two and half euros. By the way, that was the same amount the taxi to the hospital and back cost.

I spent the rest of the afternoon resting in my room and at night I went out to a very nice restaurant near the hostel and treated myself to a huge pizza to celebrate.