Going to the doctors has never been something I look forward to. So when I was told I was going (after 5 weeks of being sick) I definitely was not excited.
I knew that it wouldn’t be like a normal hospital visit, we are in Sri Lanka, after all, but I didn’t expect it to go the way it did.
It started off well: Sara, a squad leader, Andrea, a squad mate, and I secured a tuk tuk for just 500 rupees ($5NZD) to take us 20 minutes to the hospital. The driver dropped us off at a busy but almost derelict looking hospital. I was only half sure that this was the right place- but a hospital is a hospital- so we wandered in. The first nurse we spoke to spoke english and was able to direct us to the outpatients department. There were patients everywhere. The halls were filled with people wrapped in bandages and someone who had just come out of surgery was wheeled past us. The conditions were markedly different from the hospitals I worked in back home.
The second nurse we talked to didn’t speak much english but with some gestures and sign language from Sara, she understood what we wanted. I was handed a sheet and told to write my name and age and was then directed to go to room 24.
Psychiatric Consultant was emblazoned over the door of room 24. I was confused but went along with it anyway. I sat down beside the doctor. His accent was strong so I had difficulty understanding what he was saying but I did manage to understand the questions he asked me:
Do you have any allergies?
What are your symptoms?
Are you in pain?
Where is the pain?
That took less than 5 minutes. He handed me a prescription I could barely read and told me it was most likely a bacteria. With some barely intelligible english, I discovered he was telling me to go to the dispensary.
Now I was confused. 4 questions and he knew what was wrong with me? I recalled the last doctors appointment I had gone to. It most definitely lasted almost 30
minutes and the prescriptions I was given were definitely not given lightly.
We wandered around for 10 minutes, following instructions we barely understood, until a security guard took us to the dispensary. The line was wrapped around the corner so I joined the back. Standing on a broken concrete slab that looked like it had just been thrown there, I waited. And I waited. And I waited. What had been a quick visit up until that point, turned into time dragging with every second. As I inched closer to the counter, a small Sri Lankan woman behind me kept pushing me forward. If a gap of half a foot opened up, she would push me into it. By the time we rounded the corner, she was almost standing beside me.
By this time, I could see the pharmacist dispensing the medications. She sat at the desk, large jars of opened pills surrounding her. She would take a prescription, pick up a small envelope, made from reused paper with a small stamp on the front. Taking a handful of pills, she would count them and drop them in before handing them back to the waiting customer. And that was it.
It was definitely not the most efficient or trustworthy doctors experience I have had but I’m still alive. That’s good, right?
