Unhappiness is not the same as frustration. Another doctor story.

20240526

Yesterday was a very frustrating day. But, upon reflection at the end of the day, not an unhappy one. The reason is associated with the Bad Therapy thesis of activity versus state.

Zoriana attended Zlata's birthday party. She and Zlata are good friends. I had wondered that Zlata was quite a bit taller than Zoriana. It turns out she's two grades ahead in school – this was her ninth birthday.

We made three attempts to shop for the birthday present. Last weekend we went to a Ukrainian Kids R Us equivalent with a large selection. Barbie was the theme. In retrospect, Barbie makes more sense for a nine-year-old than a six-year-old. The Barbie dolls themselves, and Barbie houses, weigh in close to $100. Zoriana insisted that a cosmetics set would be the thing. I am not very sanguine about little girls and makeup, but given the budgetary constraints I gave in. We got the job done and went home.

Zoriana could not keep from fiddling with the present. I told her not to open it – it should be new, not shopworn. Despite my admonitions she opened it half a dozen times before we got home. We put it away for the week. Oksana told me that she had opened it and actually use some of the cosmetics. No! The decision presented to me was whether we should go back and buy a new one. Absolutely not – the decision that I presented in return was whether or not she goes to the party in the first place.

Oksana worked out pretty good compromise. We gave the cosmetics, but we included a set of three English language children's books that we had bought a couple of months ago. Since the girls asked me to read them a couple or three times a week, I knew that they were in almost new condition. They were somewhat clumsy poetic retellings of Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and The Little Mermaid. We bought them from Oleksandra, a Canadian woman married to a Russian/Ukrainian who formerly had a side business selling books and was trying to get rid of her inventory. I mentioned before that we took her Spanish language books, including the inspiring biography of Rita Moreno.

There are always complications. Complications number one. The party was about 7 miles away, on the right bank. The Metro goes there, but it has been out of service for five months because they are repairing water damage in one of the stations. The agreement was that they would pick up Zoriana at a Metro station we can get to at 11:30. That was convenient for us – Eddie and I could drop her and take the Metro to our Toastmasters meeting.

Complication number two. They said to meet them at the Palats Ukraina Metro station. Meeting somebody at a Metro station is a complicated affair. If you meet on the platform, you can find each other easily. Aboveground not so much. This one has three exits. Oksana had said to take the one that was headed in the direction of the party. We both forgot that they had made the street one way, so that answer didn't work. We stood on top of the wall beside the stairs going down in order to be highly visible while I called Oksana to ask once again. She told me I had the host's phone number. I didn't recall, but sure enough, somebody had stuffed a piece of paper in my pocket with a number. She also said that she had received a message to the effect that they would be late. At 11:40 we got a call. Looking across the street we saw somebody waving, so we went over and made the handoff. Eddie and I got to our meeting just on time.

Complication three. They were supposed to call at 5 o'clock to tell us when to be back to pick Zoriana up. No call. At 6:30 I told Oksana I was concerned. She looked at her phone. OMG! They had sent an SMS to meet at 7:00. She told me to rush to the bus and she would be ready with the car in case the bus didn't come. When I got there, the bus was coming. I told her not to bother. She bothered anyhow. I got in the car and despite my pleadings to slow down, not pass people on the city streets and so on, she rushed to get me to the Metro on time. Hallelujah! I got to the rendezvous point only 10 minutes late.

Complication four. They showed up 40 minutes late. That's how things go here. No apology, and Zoriana was extremely happy to see me, and she had had a good time. In the meantime, however, the air raid sirens had blared. The aboveground sections of the Metro don't run during air raids. As we descended into the Metro, we asked the attendant if there was indeed an air raid alert. There was. Instead of changing Metro lines in the middle of the city and going to our aboveground station, I decided that we would go to Pochaina and take the electric train, which always runs even during air raid alerts.

Complication five. Although we had heard that the electric train schedule had changed, I looked online early in the day and what was posted had not changed. I trusted the Internet. Wrong! Pasted on top of the regular schedule in the train station was a new one. There was a train in the station, but it was headed the wrong way. There were not going to be anymore trains going our way. Fortunately, I had figured in advance that we could take a bus. Zoriana and I walked to the bus stop. The sign said it would be 45 minutes until the next city bus. The jitney buses are more frequent but don't run on a regular schedule. I opted to take city bus that crosses the bridge even though it goes north instead of south on the other side.

Complication six. We got off where the streetcar heading south crosses the highway. The gate to the tramway was closed for construction. Surveying our options, I chose to go around, walking perhaps a fourth mile on an unmarked path, climbed up the steep bank and over a fence to get to the streetcar stop. It was heartening to see that there were a couple of other people waiting for streetcars going both directions. We asked to confirm that the trolley was coming, and one of them did after 10 minutes. The end of the trolley line is right by Zoriana's school, a five-minute drive from home. I called Oksana and asked her to meet us.

Complication seven. We got to the rendezvous point just as a bus arrived. I called Oksana, who had not yet left. We would take the bus. The bus driver, however, must have taken a cigarette break. He arrived five mosquito bitten minutes late. It gave the local Saturday night drunks time to engage us in a friendly conversation. Most drunks here are friendly, and they all know the neighborhood American. While I was swatting mosquitoes and fiddling with the bus schedule to make sure I hadn't missed anything, we had a kind of a disjointed conversation about how wonderful it is that America is supporting Ukraine in this war. The bus came and we got home.

At the end of the day, I asked myself if I was unhappy. No! For all of the twists and turns in the story, all of the vicissitudes, I was always busy plotting the next step in didn't have time to consider whether I was unhappy. These are the things of which life is made. Zoriana and I had an interesting adventure.

Oksana's mother is coming back tomorrow. This is another of those mixed blessings. She will so fully occupy the kitchen that I can't cook things I like – last night we had some excellent barbecued steak – and she will give me grief about waking the baby, using the wrong dishtowel, microbes and everything else. She will squabble with Oksana. This is also what life is made of. But on the other hand, she will be here to take care of Marianna during the day.

In another set of mixed blessings, after I had gastritis for a month I called a gastroenterologist three weeks ago, bringing the readout from the endoscope that they had dropped down my throat in August 2022. She poked and prodded and didn't find anything wrong but ordered a follow-up endoscopy just to check. In any case it was time to see if the ulcers in my esophagus had healed. I was no longer having any acid reflux, but I had been thinking it would be a good idea to check.

The endoscopy went fine. They take a video, which is a fairly big file. The doctor doing the endoscopy, the gastroenterologist and the client are expected to communicate by Viber. Viber takes a smart phone, which I have stubbornly refused to get. Nobody in the loop could figure out how to download it into an ordinary file that I could somehow put on my computer. I'm not terribly worried about it because I couldn't read anyhow. They tell me that they did a biopsy and the ulcer on my esophagus is shrinking, it is not malignant. That's as much as I need to know.

They had told me that they wanted me to come back for a blood test and an ultrasound. What they didn't tell me, or I didn't understand on account of the language issues, was that it was up to me to schedule them myself. Nobody asked if I had them when I made an appointment with the doctor, so I showed up empty-handed. They said, no problem, they would call me to schedule them. What I think they should have done in the first place. They called me for the blood test. I would have expected the ultrasound on the same day, but no, they asked me to come back the next day for the blood test. And the third day to see the doctor. A magnificent waste of time. But, on the other hand, it was a pleasant half-hour bicycle ride each way, and I had the time.

Finally, we made a fourth appointment at which the doctor told me what to do. There isn't any problem. Things are getting better. However, take this list of five medicines. I have written before that five is the magic number. You cannot see a doctor in the city without coming away with prescriptions for five medicines. I'm pretty used to the drill. I nodded sincerely, repeated each one, made sure that she wrote it down so I would have it, and I'm going to ignore the whole damn thing. There is a chance that one of them might do me some good, but there is a stronger chance that if I took all five the net effect would be negative. Since I can't tell which one might be useful, I ignore the whole thing. She also recommended that I get another endoscopy in six months. Unless my stomach is bothering me again, no way.

I look at this philosophically. A doctor has to justify her own existence, and probably a majority of patients don't feel they have done their job unless they give you a list of medications. She may not have kept up with the latest medical journals. As I wrote recently, she made a big deal out of the fact that my weight had gone up 1 kg between our two meetings. She made a big deal about my cholesterol, even though most American doctors are coming to the conclusion that cholesterol doesn't matter. It has been a fifty-year bogeyman for the medical establishment. She gave me a long list of dietary no-noes, most of which like coffee and citrus fruits I had figured out on my own. The doctor is the gateway to the people who do analytics, the endoscopy folks, the blood tests and so on. Those tests are useful, and her ability to read the results is also useful. Doctors have their place in the world. It is just not as big as they would like to have you think.

Those are the reflections from Lake WeBeGone on this Sunday morning. Oksana has formulated an elaborate plan for a day in the park, involving me taking Marianna's bicycle on the back of my bicycle and Marianna on the child seat with her, where we would go to a playground and then have lunch. She would have strongly resisted if the strongman had raised doubts about the plan. However, it appears that Zoriana is skeptical, and the whole thing may not happen. We will see.

Graham