A patient's problems

This may seem like a story about fingers, especially thick ones, and the difficulty of sitting down. But it's more a story about our social conventions to tolerate those thumb-sized fingers on our backs.

Today's story began unexpectedly and without warning, one day of days, with a strange pain in my back that I dismissed as temporary, but that wouldn't go away and, sometime, after a few days, I decided to go to the doctor. I did a quick search (research in today's language) on the internet, looked at some reviews (demek) and decided on the doctor who came out as the most highly rated.

He listened to me with his eyes and slightly puckered lips, which meant he was listening with interest, and immediately put on his gloves, pointed his index finger at me, told me to lie down, and it felt like he stabbed me with a knife. I endured it. I was still in pain and I was hoping that the finger in my intestine would somehow serve as medicine. He told me that I had a fissure. It was a word I had heard before. He gave me a cream and told me that I would soon get better. When a few days later, I wasn't getting any better, I decided to go to another doctor, barely getting into the car.

A handsome doctor, in a well-fitting robe, had played “Hotel California” to create a pleasant atmosphere. I told him I could play it on the guitar. If I could sit down, that is. He told me to drop my pants, put on my gloves, and again extended his finger. In the midst of my pain, I turned to look at him. He was leaning somewhat against my body and was staring at the ceiling with his mouth half open, almost enjoying it.

-        Are you sure it's a finger and not something else, doctor?

I asked the doctor. It occurred to me: he might have found me sexy, since I could play “Hotel California” on the guitar. After all, I was no longer a virgin on that side of my body. He told me I had hemorrhoids. He gave me a list of things I shouldn’t eat and another cream to apply. The next day, what had been my hemorrhoid burst, oozing a liquid like a mixture of cream and red and brown on a pastel. I went to the same doctor. I kind of walked in with that face: I’m the one who can play “Hotel California.” I told him about the explosion. He folded his arms. He made that face like those guys when they’re about to break up with their girlfriends. 

-        Do you? Do you need to see a surgeon?

I felt like the women they leave behind on the first night. In fact, I opened the door a little to tell the nurse not to take my money this time.

That night I called my cousin, a surgeon in Spain. I told him about the symptoms. You have a fistula, he said. You need surgery. Find a good surgeon.

I again searched the internet along with the reviews and chose the one that was said to be the best in Kosovo and beyond.

I went to schedule the surgery. The date.

As soon as I sat down, he asked me why I had come. It seemed to me that he was genuinely asking, and I started talking.

-        A couple of weeks ago…

-        What, two weeks ago?! – he shouted at me sternly. I'm asking you what's wrong, you're talking to me: two weeks, three weeks.

I didn't say anything else, I decided to leave the office, but he came out into the hallway: "Come back, we're off to a bad start."

I was leaving without paying. I came back.

He pulled down my pants again. He put on my gloves. I had already suffered from the gloves. "But I don't have a big toe," he said. He had as much as you want, the size of my big toe. Like a mallet.

You have hemorrhoids, he said. No, I have a fistula, I said. I came to schedule an operation. He looked at me again: Wow, yes, a fistula!

Go ahead and get in this razor!

I ended up in Skopje, in an operation that turned out to be among the most innovative in the region. My troubles soon ended. I was left with some questions and dilemmas.

Why should a patient in Kosovo go through an experience like mine, a complex of charlatanism, uneducatedness, and irresponsibility? What is the difference between my surgeon cousin in Spain, educated in Pristina, and his colleagues working in Kosovo? Why do we have to go to Skopje to be treated for something so banal?

I asked my friend AI (Ej-Ajin de). He listed about eight causes, some serious and some less so. I asked him how the problem could be solved. He gave me five steps that at first glance seem normal, but which I also believe anyone who works with healthcare in Kosovo should take into account. There was nothing that was not known.

In fact, the example of my personal experience in the health sector is just a reflection of our society in Kosovo. Everywhere, in every social sphere, we would have the same problems: although those problems may be different, not that they will not let you sit down, but I believe that we have a clear idea of ​​what we are talking about.

Jürgen Habermas died this year and a couple of years ago, one of his important books was carefully translated into Albanian by Blerta Ismajli. Habermas talks about deliberation (agreement), as a model, where the media, civil society, daily debates, even conversations in cafes shape thoughts and values ​​within the community, through rational public discourse, while formal institutions then translate these into systemic values. However, in our society, charlatanism, illiteracy and irresponsibility are somehow unnoticed and continuous. They are the results of our common agreement as a society. Not as rational discourse that produces legitimacy, but as a kind of silent social consensus that produces the avoidance of formal rules and general values.

In society, we have managed to quietly agree among ourselves that having acquaintances, paying bribes, submitting to authorities, be they medical authorities, to whom we entrust our health and lives, is the easiest and most beneficial solution. 

Like a lie, which is always an act of cooperation. No one can lie to you if you don't want to believe that lie. It's the same with this system. No one can impose it if we don't accept it ourselves. Consequently, no one can change it if our mutual agreement doesn't change.

I understood. No one was to blame for my experience. I was to blame myself. I was to blame for not taking any action in this public discourse that shapes social agreements.  

To get out of such a situation, not only in healthcare, a revival of the public sphere will be needed, a new social agreement with open and continuous debate.

Otherwise, we'll have to demand that doctors at least have a little thinner fingers, damn it, or we'll never be able to sit down.

In other words: Maybe it's best not to sit at all.