9
October
2006
*It’s 5 AM and I can’t sleep because of fever and muscle aching. I haaaaaaaaate the flu. *
… Gorgeous gipsy girl comes in with her mom, sits down and looks at me. The mom starts telling me then how healthy her girl is, how she’s strong and loves to do housework and how she had an epilepsia-like crisis when she was five, but didn’t have another since then. I look at them in amazement (why is she here then?) and ask how can I help .
Turns out the girl is to be married to a wealthier guy, but he found out from some spiteful rival that she has mental handicap papers and suffers from epilepsia, and now the girl’s family wants to get rid of the handicap proofs and get her pronounced clinically healthy. The mom slimes around me, repeating that I should “take care” of the girl and then she’ll “take care of my needs” in return. I tell her I’ll write exactly what I’ll find and get her out of the room.
The girl doesn’t turn out to be an epileptic, but she’s mentally deficient, with an IQ of 58. Lord knows it was strange to watch a deficient trying hard to cheat the tests for a better result, instead of the usual “let’s play dumb and hope she won’t see that”. I write the papers and have a little chat with her about how a guy that stops loving her because she might have epi probably isn’t worth much. She agrees and says it’s her future mother-in-law that keeps pushing the son to demand proof of her health.
Mom comes in, tries to slip me a 50 RON note (around 18$ - five days’ payment in my case) and I almost have to battle her to make her understand that I won’t take the money. They leave.
Posted: hospital
6
October
2006
.. tag virginity, that is -and Raluca is to be blamed for it .
3 places I love here:
- the Catholic cathedral. A mix of Gothic and Romanic, many times burned down and then rebuilt, it’s where me and Robi married.
- the part of the citadel where this medieval window still can be seen even if the house sunk in the ground enough to render it non-functional .
- this quiet old street near my workplace, where one of the biggest collection of manuscripts and papiruses from this part of Europe is located.
3 places I hate here:
- the industrial zone. Dust, cars and ugly buildings.
- the “Tiganime” - the only neighborhood where I wouldn’t dare go after 8PM.Basically, our very own ghetto.
- the “Ampoi” neighborhoods (there are 3 of them) - home of the most manele admirers / square kilometer
3 places where I like to go with my friends:
- our one and only chinese restaurant, called Zhong Yi . Good food, huge portions, reasonable prices
- Pizzeria Nettuno -recently discovered, home of the best pizza in town (and we have LOTS of pizzerias, trust me)
- The Steak House - when we roll in cash and feel hungry for Meat with a capital M.
3 things an outsider wouldn’t understand about my town:
- the local dialect. Older peasants from around the town still speak it, younger people ocasionally indulge in slipping into it.
- our fondness for the local bread and local telemea, to which no other bread or cheese can compare.
- why the gates of our citadel still aren’t renovated, 8 years after the start of the restauration.
The fanciest neighborhood - definetely the plethora of villas that appeared just under one of our beloved hills, the Mammoth.
The ugliest neighborhood - Tiganime. You don’t want to see it, trust me.
If you know what to google, you’ll find out the name of my town easily. Good luck 
Now for the tagging:
Mrs.S
Mist
Becky
and Mar
Posted: stumbled upon
6
October
2006
Posted: chestii
5
October
2006
These last few days saw both the return to my usual room and the most interesting cases of the year. It was like the patients that truly deserve to be called “loons” and not only “mentally disturbed people” decided simmultaneously : “Hey! Let’s pay Shrinkmamma a visit! She’ll be glad! Maybe she’ll even give us cookies! Cookies are good!”
The best was a woman that sat silently for the first half of the examination, staring at me with a bored absent gaze that even Garfield on a Monday couldn’t match. In the mean time I was trying to get anything out of her, anything, so that I could get a bit of a view on her thoughts and beliefs. No luck.
After a while, her brother got the brilliant idea to ask her for a bit of money to go buy bananas. That’s when we were suddenly drowned under a torrent of angry speech from the lady with the central point being that neither her brother, nor me or the mean people that were after her and kept opening the door (Adina’s patients, asking for their files) won’t touch her money. Fine by me, since now she was responsive.
…or so I thought. I could ask her anything, from what’s her name to who shot Kennedy, and she would answer joyfully something completely senseless (”Yeah, apple trees are in blossom, Miss. Aren’t grasshoppers cute?”). Dana was snickering behind me, trying really hard not to burst into laughter. After a while she started coughing, announced loudly that she had to go pee and left the room. I could hear her on the corridor (”Bwahahaha .. frogs bloom pink in spring ..heeeee!”). It wasn’t helping my straight face at all.
I managed to gather enough data in the end from her rare coherrent seconds and her brother’s answers .The image of the blooming pink frog still ocasionally springs back in my mind.
Posted: hospital
3
October
2006
Looks like I’m on the first page on Google for “I want to move in Transilvania” (more precisely, my post about the festival in Sighisoara is). For the English person that searched it: by all means, come. Both your food and your weather will get better.
In other news, don’t click this link if you eat/drink anything. The snorting and coughing from the laughter will ruin your keyboard.
Posted: stumbled upon
2
October
2006
Guy comes in, says he came with his Ma to get her examined for the handicap comission, and that she’s in an ambulance outside the Ambulatoriu, waiting to be examined . I ask for the papers, learn that she has Dementia and is paralysed, so she has to be examined in the car.
The woman is alert but her answers are illogical (for example I ask her what’s the name of her son and she starts to tell me how she needs to go back home to sow some seeds) and she has no idea of the date or the place she’s at. Seeing that her memory and attention are also below the ground, I conclude that I saw enough and go back to my place to write the papers.
We make some smalltalk with her son while I’m writing and I ask when did she first start to exhibit the symptoms, especially since in her ID picture she looks like a healthy and strong woman. He then almost bursts into tears and tells me that she was a strong woman indeed, raising her kids alone and working at the field most of her life. She was like this until 12 years ago, when a man has beaten and raped her. He was caught three years later, when he tried to rape two other women, but by that time the damage was done - she turned to madness to protect herself.
He described how she started to gradually retreat from life and from interactions with the others ; how she washed less and less until she stopped washing herself; and how when she was asked why she was doing it she said that she wanted to look ugly and smell because this way she could be sure that nobody tries to touch her again . He described how she hit him when he tried to wash her; and how she then slipped into dementia.
I fear the disease she has most of all, even more than cancer. Yet in her case, I’m not sure if it wasn’t for the better. You see, this way she forgot.
Posted: hospital
