Category: medicine

>My University Rocks

~ Clarissa ~ 8 Comments

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So I just got the bill for the emergency room visit I had to make in January. The whole thing cost a little less than $3500, which is about what I expected. The ambulance had to be called, which obviously cannot be cheap. But  I only have to pay $200 because it turns out that the medical insurance provided by my university is really good. I’d never had a chance to sample the American healthcare system before. All I heard were horror stories about how each trip to the hospital results in ruinous bills that no insurance can cover. I’d actually started saving money to cover the bill while I was waiting for it. So it’s good to know that a college professor can afford good healthcare.
I now love my great university that gave me this wonderful insurance even more. I’m a very happy camper right now, people. And yes, I know that this expression is horribly cliched, but I like it anyway. 

>Medical Care in the Soviet Union

~ Clarissa ~ 14 Comments

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When I tell people I was born in the Soviet Union, more often than not I hear them ask, “The medical care there was amazing, wasn’t it?” Well, let me tell you about just how fantastic it was. God, those fond memories are just rushing in.
Medical care in the USSR was completely free. Of course, if you didn’t offer any gifts or bribes to the doctors and nurses, you could count on nobody paying any attention to you and making you wait forever even for the urgent medical procedures. To give an example, my mother couldn’t convince the nurses she was in labor. They kept telling her to wait in a very rude manner. It wasn’t my mother’s first time giving birth, so she was pretty sure of what was going on. Still, nobody wanted to pay attention to her. It was night-time, and she was being extremely inconsiderate going into labor at that inconvenient time.
When I was five, I had a tonsillectomy. It is a fairly minor procedure that many people undergo with no complications. So it would have been in my case had it not been for the fact that the doctors confused me with some other little girl who was allergic to anaesthetics. So they didn’t anesthetize me. (Something tells me that the other girl was a lot worse off because they must have pumped her full of drugs she was allergic to and that I was supposed to get instead.)
Before the operation, my parents told me that I would be given a medication to make the procedure painless. So when the doctor started tearing my tonsils out with no anaesthetic, I started crying. Not surprising, given that I was five years old. So he hit me in the face with his fist to shut me up. When I walked out of the operation room (which you were supposed to leave the moment the operation ended), my face was covered in blood. Then I was put in a ward with many other little kids. It was December, and the room was freezing cold. It was so cold that I got pneumonia. At least, my mother was there with me, which was very unusual in Soviet hospitals. Normally, little sick kids were denied any contact with their parents during hospitalization. So I was really lucky. The nice, kind doctors wouldn’t let me leave because apparently they weren’t done with me just yet. When matters started looking really grim, my grandfather came and removed me from the hospital. So at least I’m alive.
When my sister was about the same age, she got sick. Kids get sick, it happens. A doctor came to see her. She looked at my sister indifferently and said to my mother, stifling a yawn: “The kid’s gonna die, lady. She’s in a bad way.” Of course, my mother started crying and saying that it wasn’t possible. It didn’t even seem like my sister was feeling all that bad. “I said she’ll die,” said the doctor irritably. “Can’t you hear me?” But at least that nice doctor came to visit us absolutely for free. (My sister grew up to be a beautiful, healthy adult, thanks be to Allah.)
These are just a few of my stories about the beauty of the Soviet healthcare. One day I’ll tell you about the wonders of the Soviet gynecological services which will turn your stomach. So don’t be too surprised if I don’t take all that kindly to any pontifications on how amazing the medical care in the USSR was.

>Why I’m Against the HPV Vaccine

~ Clarissa ~ 24 Comments

>Many people believe that being opposed to the HPV vaccine means that you are some kind of a religious fanatic: “Conservative elements and religious institutions have often opposed it for the same reasons they oppose birth control education in schools—that these measures will somehow encourage young people to have sex.” I, however, oppose it on feminist grounds.

We keep hearing that the female body is diseased, inherently wrong, and in need of constant policing and control. This control is often carried out through the attempts to “repair” the female body medically. Women are constantly told that somehow they simply cannot exist unless their bodies are continuously modified through some form of medication. Hormone replacement therapy, HPV vaccine, PMS medication, Mydol. The idea behind all this is that female body is one huge mistake of nature, which can finally be stabilized through the benevolent ministrations of pharmaceutical companies. The HPV vaccine is supposed to “only work” when administered to teenagers. Obviously, the goal is to start convincing women as early as possible that the very fact of being female equals being damaged and in need of a cure.

For me, all these efforts to present women as perennial invalids who need to be cured of their painful and problematic sex are the modern equivalent of foot-binding.