Dear Reader: Last New Year's Eve, I wrote of my experience with a tale of two cities: one, the soup kitchen, two, the lavish gala to which I was invited. This New Year's, I am in Jerusalem. Well, I was in Jerusalem. Now I am in Tel Aviv. I'ts been a whirlwind tour of Israel, partly with Hadassah, partly on my own. If it's Wednesday, it must be Tel Aviv. Gosh, I've been to so many places in the past week.
One of the places I visited (unplanned) was BikurRofe--Doctor's Visit. I have an unpleasant gastroenteritis virus, which is holding up the works. Or spilling out my guts. Es tut mir leide. No one wants to hear too much about my colon. Kind of like a Monty Pythonesque Spanish Inquisition routine. No one ever thinks about the Spanish Inquisition. Our main tactics are fear, stealth.....er, what?
At any rate, it comes and goes. And when it goes, it really goes. By Sunday night, when we reached the Galilee, I was convinced I was dying. It felt like my internal organs were all turning to liquid and trying to exit my body in the worst possible way. And I mean that. My abdomen was a bubble of pain. I couldn't keep up. I felt so ashamed--since when has the day come that Sharon R. Kahn could not keep up with a group of middle-aged, out of shape sorts? I wanted to see a doctor. Can you imagine. Who'd have thought they ever hear that one emerging out of my mouth. I sat on the bench outside the dining hall. I couldn't go on. They tried to get me a cab--no cab driver in the Galilee would come out at that hour. The story was told of a man who needed a cab and also couldn't get one. So he had the ingenuity to call a pizza guy for a delivery. Then, when the pizza guy showed up, he jumped in the car and asked the guy to take him where he needed to go. I spent a miserable night. The next day, one of the guides drove me to BikurRofe somewhere out there. And I had my experience with National Health Service. For me--458NIS. That's 3.5 NIS per dollar--so, about $133. Which, by the way, is less than I would pay if I went to the ER in NYC. What was my experience in National Health. Just as bad as it was here. FIrst, the clerk interviews me and takes my charge card. Then I go to the nurse, who takes my temperature and blood pressure. Youch--those Israeli blood cuffs bite down to your bone. Then, I go to the doctor. The doctor wore no ID. No name tag. He barely looked at me, and when he did it was with sheer indifference. No small talk. He just tapped away at his computer and asked a few questions. He spoke to me with the indifferent tone that Sandor Ferenczi railed against with psychoanalysts. He then asked me to lay on the examining table and pressed my stomach in a few places, with ungloved hands. He then said I had a virus and he would prescribe papaverine for 3 days. That's all. The whole thing, from clerk to doc, was over with in less than 10 minutes. So it's very efficient. The guide took me down the block to a drugstore, where I received 10 tablets of papaverine for about 28NIS. I took one immediately and felt my stomach calm down. When I got back to the kibbutz where we were staying, I looked up this papaverine, a drug I had never heard of. It is a "weak opioid." It is a "vasodilator," which lowers blood pressure and smooths those rough colonic contractions. It tires the living daylights out of me and gave me a migraine. So today, I only took one after breakfast and found that by the end of play, I was symptomatic again. So I took the second one and tomorrow I will take the full dose--who wants to fool around with a stomach virus, eh?
So why have we never heard about papaverine in the US? It seems to have a lot of virtues in the short run. It lowers blood pressure. It smooths over rough contractions. It relaxes and tires. It apparently has use as a boner pill. Imagine, it is both relaxing and stimulating simultaneously. What's not to love about this?
Well, for one thing, it gave me a migraine. It wears me out but it doesn't bring on REM sleep. More like passing out unexpectedly. And it certainly doesn't give me a boner. And if I stop the drug, the symptoms come back. So tonight, in Tel Aviv, I was able to get a hotel doctor: Imagine--he comes right to your room. For only $220 shekels--that's about $75 dollars--what I would pay to go to Urgent Care. This doctor was right from central casting. Dark curling hair. Reassuring voice. He took my blood pressure, my heart, my lungs, pressed on my stomach, examined my urine. He told me everything was fine, I didn't need medication. Rice. Potatoes. Toast. Bananas. In other words, the BRAT diet. He said that STOP IT was a better medication, and recommended that. It is OTC. How can you not love a medication called "STOP IT."
Then I bought it--it turns out it is night a prescription. It is OTC. It is Immodium!!!!!!!!
But it's okay.
Altogether, I spent about $215 for two doctor visits--the latter to my room with Dr. Cutie.