Health Problems

I’ve been diagnosed by a Russian doctor as having feeble limbs. There are two explanations for this diagnosis. The first is that when interviewed in Russian, I might have answered “da” to a question when I should have said “nyet.” The second explanation is a little more complicated.

Slava wanted a traditional Russian vacation this year. In Soviet times people didn’t do frivolous things like go off to have fun; they got authorization for health treatment at a sanitarium. The experience, I’ve been told, is quite relaxing.

I was quite willing to go to the Health Hotel for ten days. Slava made reservations and booked our flight, then he asked me what kind of health treatment I wanted. I said that I feel perfectly fine. It was the wrong answer. “What?!! You’d take the place of someone who really needs it?!!” We set off to find something wrong with me.

It turns out it’s best if there’s just a little bit wrong with you. Having tuberculosis or HIV or a sexually transmittable disease is not good. So I got a lung x-ray, an EKG, went to a gynecologist, and left blood and urine samples at the Russian Academy of Sciences polyclinic. Everything was normal. It was up to one last doctor to determine a reason for me to go to the Health Hotel for ten days.  

I helpfully suggested that my cardiovascular system might benefit from attention. (It doesn’t get enough attention from me, in the form of regular exercise.) As an essentially lazy person I was thinking that Russian medicine might have a machine that would do the work for me while I lie around for ten days... I think this is how I got the diagnosis of having feeble limbs.