The High Cost of Living

To confirm my acceptance into the JET program, I had get myself checked out by a doctor. Even after having been a salarygirl for 1.5 years, I still scrape the bottom of the barrel, come end of the month. So when I found out that all the local rip-off doctors were going to require a few hundred rands from me for tests and x-rays, I decided to phone a friend.

Eric has been one of my friends for years now. We even went to our high school matric farewell together. Our paths split during uni years, and after tertiary education, we ended up living half an hour’s drive away from each other. He’s a doctor-in-training in a government hospital, and he totally agreed to play doctor in order for my JET form to be completed. I drove through after work, arrive, eat a chocolate Easter bunny’s head, and mission off to the hospital.

First, I have to open a file. Eric hands me a slip of paper which says ‘CASUALTY’. Cool.

“Go to the counter. Tell them that you drank a lot of pills. You need to be admitted. Remember: You’re overdosing on pills.”

I hadn’t planned on playing sick. Pills? What a siff way to try and kill yourself. Stomach pumping and all that. I take my place in the queue of three people and try imagine why I’d drink too many pills. I decide that I’d been visiting some dodgy friends, who dared me to swallow a handful of pills, which I did, because I am dodgy. And I wait. I hold my stomach. And I wait. I run my hands through my hair, repeatedly (all the better to shape an afro, my child). And I wait. I rock back a forth. And I wait 25 minutes before the guy at the counter finished flirting with his dying patient, and I get to open my file.

I shuffle over to the counter (pills. I drank pills), take my seat, and groan a “Sawubona” to the chick behind the glass panel. She doesn’t return my greeting. She just stares at me with crazy eyes. Finally, she speaks:

“Don’t take this the wrong way but.. are you a man or a lady?”

Her comment shatters my suicide facade, and I burst out laughing. So much for dying, eh? As a fan of androgyny, she unwittingly gave me the biggest compliment. I quit pretending to be dying, and she happily fills out my form. I become an official patient of the inadequate South African Governmental hospital system.

Next step: x-rays of my lungs, to check for da TB. My suicide becomes stupidity:

“Just tell them that you swallowed a pin, and you experienced shortness of breath afterwards, and you need to get an x-ray of your lungs”

Another 25 minutes wasted on cheap plastic seats. I walk around, reading leaflets on breast feeding and poems about death. I get my x-rays and have it analysed. Even with a history of smoking, my lungs are in prime condition (I thank Taoist breathing exercises). My clavicle has healed (I have the best collarbone x-rays, defined by screws and plates). My piss is pure. My blood pressure is textbook. My eyes are 20/20 all the way. My heart beats 80 times per minute. I am sane. I am free.