Czech Healthcare Adventure! Part IV

"The flu hit late that year" will officially be my "the sea was angry that day, my friends." 

I honestly thought the bacterial infection I had would have been the end of my health issues for the month, maybe even for the year. I was a hopeful adult child staring up into the cosmos over Brno after I should have been in bed hours before. This wasn't the "what am I going to do with my career" gazing that some of us do. I didn't want to become an astronaut or a president or a truck driver like I actually wanted to be at one point. I just wanted to be healthy. I'm not going to say the universe had other plans for me because the universe isn't capable of designing paths for people. But I did have a string of health-related events I'm hoping ends with the norovirus. 

Ah yes, the norovirus: amphetamine for bowels and gasoline for the highest of fevers. The antibiotics I took to clear the bacterial infection wasn't effective against the dormant virus and the contagion reared its pestilent head right after I crawled into bed last Friday. My body clamped up like a fleshy vice. I was freezing under my blankets but knew it was impossible due to the summer temperatures that have descended upon Brno and most of Europe. My spine and thighs were fraught a seething tension that only let up if I squeezed myself into the smallest of fetal positions, like a sore muscle engulfing my entire anatomy. I hadn't felt this sick since 2007 when my college boyfriend and I were horrendously ill. We slept in separate rooms to try to avoid spreading the collegiate-bound plague to each other, but it was only a matter of time before widespread damage was felt from the bedroom to the dining room floor where I was sleeping temporarily.

I called my mom via FaceTime from within my FEMA blanket shelter. I told her something wasn't right, even though my blood sugars had been back to normal for over a week. This was something else, an ugly side of science reserved for medical experiments during the thick of wartime and that sticky ambiguous film covering plastic toys for children under 5. She convinced me to seek help like I had two weeks before and I dialed 112 in hopes of a better result. 

Me: Mluvis anglicky?

Operator: Yes, do you need help?

Me: Yes, I need to see a doctor. 

Operator: What is wrong with you?

Me: I have a high fever and I can't untwist my body. 

I realized "untwist" was probably one of the last remaining vocabulary words a Czech bilingual speaker has yet to learn in English, but I continued. 

Me: I'm very sore in my back and legs. 

Operator: And where do you live?

I gave the woman my address and she spoke some Czech to a colleague just out of earshot. She returned to the phone with what seemed like good news.

Operator: We will send you a doctor. 

Me: You are sending me a doctor, or do I need to go to the hospital?

Operator: We will send you a doctor. Thank you goodbye. 

She hung up and I had zero idea what to expect. Who was going to show up at my house at 4am on a Saturday morning? Dr. Who? At first I thought it might have been one of those doctors with the reflective plate on their head and a stethoscope around their neck regardless of whether or not the situation required its use. Can an IV fit in one of those vintage leather doctor bags? Do they even still make those? I had a lot of questions which were soon met with disappointing answers. 

My doorbell rang. Like an old Czech babicka, I hobbled down the stairs draped in the blanket that's the exact same color of my favorite dog. I opened my door to two gruff EMTs wearing bright orange protective gear and a mullet that was a little late to the party. I greeted them with my typical salutation I've been using for the past six months. 

Me: English?

Them: Ne. Ceske? 

Me: Ne. 

So we didn't speak the other's respective language. We stared at each other while the birds chirped and greeted the day with a better sounding conversation. They spoke in Czech and then said to me, "Come. Insurance card. Passport." Okay, so it's not a totally lost cause. Usually when Czech people say they don't speak English, they understand some to an extent, or they only know certain important words, sort of like how I speak Czech. I went inside still wearing my blanket and got my bag, cell phone charger, Kindle, and any medication. I said goodbye to Patrick and told him I loved him before I locked my door. 

The EMTs motioned for me to get in back of a bright green and orange ambulance. Once I was inside on a stretcher, they attempted to remove the best blanket in the entire world. My fever was keeping my bones tight and close to my body, so any release of appendages was hurting pretty much everywhere. I pulled up the hood on my hoodie and crossed my arms. The EMT with the mullet sat down next to me and yanked my arm out straight. He could see me shaking from being cold but mistook it for being scared. With my arm in one of his hands, he used the other to press lightly in the air like to tell someone to take it easy. I told him "zima," Czech for "cold" and "winter." He nodded at my poor pronunciation. "Take off," he said pointing to my hoodie. 

I realized I didn't put on a bra before leaving the house. I had thought about it but it would have required more angular movements than I wanted to commit to. So I sat there with no blanket or hoodie literally freezing my tits off in a wife beater, my chosen attire for time spent at home. The mullet grabbed both of my arms and held them out straight in front of me. He was being more forceful than he needed to be. You'd think EMTs would show some finesse given their profession but this felt more like I was an action figure, simply being moved into whatever position they see fit. The guy started hitting both of my wrists, which hurt a lot considering my bones were already in pain. Each impact was like a shock to my skeleton and the norovirus was amplifying every sensation I was feeling physically. The EMT showed me a needle so that I knew he was going to draw blood. I'm a diabetic person with tattoos so I don't exactly have an aversion to needles, but this was different. Because of my fever, my veins weren't showing up at all, which lead to multiple attempts at finding them intravenously. He spoke to his buddy about what I assumed was his lack of luck. Eventually they found a vein in my right arm and he gave me back my hoodie to cover up. 

As soon as I draped myself and recoiled my limbs back in like a dying spider, the EMT pushed me back on the stretcher and took the hoodie he had just returned to me. With no warning, he yanked up my shirt and listened to my breathing. I couldn't even look at myself. I found other points in the ambulance to look at. Eventually he started pushing on my stomach and asking "yes" or "no," but I didn't know what kind of answer he was looking for. "Yes, it feels fine." "Yes, that hurts." I relied on facial expressions without making eye contact to convey the pain. I was sensitive to pressure since my stomach and bowels had become completely unreliable. Have you ever had a cat knead your stomach only to feel like you're going to totally shit yourself if you don't stop him right that minute?

The EMT recorded his results while I rolled over and pulled my shirt back down. I started crying. I'm incredibly tough with physical pain, but this was more than I could bear, especially with a fever. I was embarrassed and exposed. I didn't know these people and they weren't overly concerned with my general comfort inside this mobile ER. I just wanted to feel better but getting to that point seemed like a challenge. I want to communicate effectively, but how? I suppose it was my own fault for not learning enough Czech sooner, but even in the medical world, there are certain words in English that don't exist in Czech. I felt stuck and now I was actually scared. 

Mullet strapped me in the stretcher and told me "Hospital." Most of my responses at this point were either nodding or simply "thank you." The ride to Bohunice, the biggest hospital in Brno, only took 15 minutes. It was hard to tell where I was going since I was on an actual road and not a tramline for once. On arrival, they wheeled me down and into a completely empty ER. It was dark and poorly lit but all of the technology seemed up to date and identifiable. The EMT unbuckled me from the stretcher and told me to sit in a chair for a nurse. Finding someone who spoke even the littlest amount of English proved difficult, but I soon saw a nurse to whom I could speak in just words and not complete sentences. I handed her my passport, insurance card, and the paperwork I had with me from my last ER visit two weeks before. It was in Czech and possibly provided some answers as to why I was in the condition that I was, but in a more detailed fashion.

The nurse took my vital signs and told me initially I didn't have a fever. I was skeptical since on the surface I was burning up but inside I was freezing like the frigid hipster I am. The nurse yanked out my arm to draw more blood. She wrapped a rubber band around my bicep and knocked on my elbow ditch as if she was expecting someone to answer. When she inserted the needle, the pain got to me and I tried to retract but she looked me dead in the face and yelled "NO." Ah, okay. Sorry. It's not like I was trying to be difficult or to fuck up the end of her night shift. But that shit legitimately hurt. 

She then hooked me up to an IV and I tried with all of my stupid might to not flinch or move. I started crying again because I just wanted this to be over and I wanted some answers as to what the fuck was going on. I figured it was some kind of flu but wasn't aware of how severe. I kept my parents in the loop. My dad was in the hospital at the time as well with his own issues so we sent IV selfies to each other. After an hour, my bag had emptied and the nurse came out with my results. By this time I wasn't as shaky as I was and felt more like my temperature had returned to its rightful baseline. I definitely had a flu but my only instructions upon exit were to take ibuprofen to keep my fever down and drink lots of water to remedy the literal shit storm brewing within. She said it was good I wasn't vomiting, so I had that going for me!... She also urged me to have a friend come pick me up to take me home. I don't have a lot of friends here, and the friends I do have are carless or would straight up tell me to go fuck myself if I asked them for a ride home from the hospital at 8am on a Saturday morning. 

I paid the 90 crown ($4) fee for my discharge and plodded around the hospital wearing my blanket cape and smudgy glasses. Through a maze of linoleum and indecipherable signage, I followed my blip on Google Maps to try to find my way to the bus stop. The complex at Bohunice has many floors and many of the floors look exactly the same. It was quiet, like a medical ghost town since no one was working on Saturday morning. I followed signs to what I thought were exits but then they turned out to be offices. I pushed my glasses up my nose and tried to keep the sweatpants I bought for rehab above the edges of my slippers that I also bought for rehab. I didn't look my best.

I plopped down at the bus stop and realized I barely had any food at home, so before going home, I stopped at the grocery store up the street. Lots of Czech women do their grocery shopping first thing in the morning and somehow they all found the time to do their hair and make up beforehand. Enter the haggard fleece-draped biohazard who bought soy milk and crackers. I returned home to drink as much water as I felt comfortable and hung out with my kitty. Six days later I'm still tired and groggy but the wretched fever I had has been exorcised. I got three decent sized bruises as free souvenirs and my bowels are mostly subdued and no longer having sudden and lengthy surprise parties. 

I just want to be healthy. That's all I want. I mean I want everyone to be healthy and operating at full capacity, but I just want to be my best self and it's hard when your body won't let you do that. I don't know where I got the norovirus from. It could have been anywhere in Wroclaw and Vienna or somewhere in between. I missed the burning witches festivals and the 1st of May holiday in the Czech Republic where you're supposed to kiss the person you love under a cherry tree, but there's always next year. I'm going to roll over and kiss my cat instead.

Czech Healthcare Adventure! Part III

Over the weekend, I was turned away from a Czech emergency room. 

Yep. Turned away. 

For the last two weeks my blood sugar has been wildly unstable. I talked with my doctor numerous times to figure out what steps I needed to take to decipher what sorts of Enigma-like codes my body was signaling to me. Narrowing out possibilities is pretty much all I can do. It's a trial and error process since I can't ask my body what's wrong with it. If something is amiss, I'll usually see it in my blood sugar levels before anything else. 

I adjusted both of my insulin levels with no success. My next method of detective work involved going off certain medications. I thought the Czech version of American drugs were the culprit, but even that seemed strange since all of the essential ingredients are the same. Because I was going low at seemingly random times and more frequently, I was having to eat total garbage. When I'd go low again after correcting myself with Skittles or juice, the last thing I wanted to do was consume anything else, and having to do this often was causing havoc on my digestive system. I cancelled classes because my stomach was in knots after eating so much while trying to prevent myself from going low to the point of seizure or unconsciousness. Having a normal meal at scheduled times became rare. And then on Saturday night it was clear something was incredibly wrong. 

My body got to the point where it only had two modes of operation: not shitting at all or shitting way too much. I figured my digestive system was deteriorating from all the sugar I was having to eat to stay level. My teeth hurt from the increased amounts of acidity and I need to brush very gingerly. I became nauseous, sad, frustrated, and tired. I was exhausted from running out of my classes to drink juice and run back in, from having to carry around extra weight of food and drink when businesses were closed, and from the amount of phone calls I was having to make to try and get my questions answered. I was getting low multiple times a day and nothing seemed to work.

My blood sugar is usually supposed to be between 90 and 120, but these changing levels were causing me to go as low as 40. I'd be sweaty, shaky, unable to form a complete sentence, and extremely panicky. My students noticed, the other teachers I work with noticed, and having to explain an autoimmune disease in choice vocabulary to a non-native speaker proved to be very difficult. I was worn out from the questions and the onslaught of misinformation I needed to discredit. 

Then my kidneys started hurting. My joints in my hips and knees were inflamed with unidentifiable tension and I couldn't stand up straight without having to keel over and rest my weight on my knees. I wasn't able to lie down without bending into a fetal position and my stomach felt like it was infinitely expanding from having to constantly consume food. I told my mom about my symptoms and she suggested I go to the ER. Despite being in the Czech Republic for six months, I wasn't sure how to go about that. I knew where the hospitals and urgent care centers were, but what I didn't know was that some hospitals only specialize in certain things. It sounds naive and probably American to think that I should be able to go into any ER and be seen immediately, but I was totally wrong. 

Kisha, my closest friend in CZ, lives one bus stop away from me, and when I decided to go to the hospital, she walked up the hill at 2am and met me with my blood sugar at 60. I tried to eat but my blood sugar kept going down. I was frantic and crying. What should I bring with me? How long will I be gone? What if something is seriously wrong with me? What was the cause of all this? My dead pancreas couldn't spring back to life after being deceased for eight years, so why the random instability? 

I grabbed some snacks, my toothbrush, an extra pair of underwear, a roll of toilet paper, and my phone charger. We got a cab to the urgent care hospital that was just down the street from the school where we work. I was wearing my sweatpants and slippers I bought for rehab and tried to be as comfortable as I could, except my body was clearly fighting my every move. After arriving at urgent care, we spoke broken Czech to a few different staff members to try to locate the actual emergency room. In the US, an ambulance bay in a hospital is pretty obvious when you see it, but in the middle of the night with next to zero neon signage, it took some lengthy navigating of narrow cement hallways, outdated elevators, and stenciled warnings from the communist era. 

When we finally reached the door to the actual ER, I was resting with my hands on my knees and my lips were turning blue. I was sweating and shaking and was in serious need of help when a nurse appeared at the door. She crossed her arms and stared at Kisha and I as if she were surprised to see us. We explained in Czech that I was diabetic and my blood sugar was low, but through miscommunication she kept telling us she couldn’t give me any insulin. (I’ve had a few people ask me if they should give someone insulin when their blood sugar is low. DO NOT DO THIS. It will send them into shock even faster and they’ll most likely have a seizure. Insulin is what keeps blood sugar low, not raise it). We kept telling her I didn’t need any insulin when a doctor came out to see us. He rolled his eyes and spoke with her, and then she told us that they don’t help diabetic people here because this wasn't that kind of a hospital. This particular hospital was marked as urgent care but only for trauma related circumstances. While Kisha and I were trying to decide what to do, another couple came in and were also turned away. At this point I was heavily shaking and not realizing it at the time. I needed serious medical assistance and a hospital turned me away? What do we do now?

We went back outside to the entrance of the hospital and sat on the curb trying to get a cab late on a Saturday night. Our local cab apps for Brno weren’t working and “hailing” a passing cab here leaves you ignored and scoffed at. I finally bit the bullet and dialed 112, our emergency number. Luckily to work for 112, speaking English is a requirement, so I spoke with a representative and had the following conversation.

Me: Mluvis anglicky?

Rep: Yes.

Me: I’m currently at the hospital on Ponavka and I’m in a lot of pain and my blood sugar won’t go up. I’m diabetic and I need serious help.

Rep: You need to go to the hospital.

Me: …right. I went into the hospital at Ponavka and they turned me away.

Rep: And you need help?

Me: YES.

Rep: You need to tell the nurse you need help.

Me: I already did that. And they told me they couldn’t help me. A hospital. Told me they couldn’t help me. So now I’m trying to figure out what to do. That’s why I called this number.

Rep: Can you go back inside?

Me: …hang on.

Kisha and I walked all the way back up to the emergency room with a janky elevator ride and damp hallways. The nurse came back out to see us and once again looked surprised to see us one more time as if she had done something for us earlier. I said to her, “jedna jedna dva” and pointed at my phone so she knew who was on the line. The representative with 112 spoke with the nurse in Czech for a few minutes. She handed the phone back to me and the rep and I continued our conversation.

Rep: You need to go to another hospital.

Me: Even though I’m literally in a hospital? Right now?

Rep: Yes, you’re in a trauma hospital. They only treat serious injuries like broken bones.

Me: So what if that person with a broken bone is diabetic and they’re having some serious issues? Do they get sent away, too?

Rep: You can’t be treated there.

Me: Clearly.

Rep: You can go to the military hospital two kilometers away. They are open during the night.

I hang up the phone and Kisha looks at me completely dumbfounded. Urgent care turned out to not be as urgent as we needed it to be, and we were fairly astonished that hospitals can be picky with who they treat in a time of emergency. This surprise might be our “we grew up in the United States and we can get help anywhere” inhibition kicking in, but it seems ridiculous that in a supposedly developed country like the Czech Republic you can’t get the proper medical care when you need it. Sure, they’ll hand out health insurance like Facebook event invites, but they’re going to be super selective with who and what they treat.

Kisha and I dug into our phones and located the military hospital across the river. She told me my lips were blue and my face was sunken in and I started to get scared. I was sitting on the curb outside of a hospital that refused to care for me. A cab finally showed up and took us to the heavily gated military castle/hospital in another part of town. A small old Czech man was guarding the front gate with an old tv and rolled cigarettes, and he wore a uniform but it hadn’t been pressed or starched in years. Once again, in broken Czech, we explained through the metal gate that I was in pain and needed help. He gave us rudimentary but understandable directions on where to go after he let us pass through his barricade.

Our second emergency room had a door bell we had to ring for service. The entire hallway was empty, white, and clean with only two chairs available for patients, which could either be a good sign or a bad sign. The good sign being that they keep people healthy enough here to not have to need to see an internal specialist, the bad sign being no one actually comes for help. A haggard looking nurse opened the door to Kisha and I. She had clearly been sleeping and wasn’t up for having a conversation in Czech or English. I asked her if she spoke English and she nodded through her lucid dream. I explained I was in pain and couldn’t stand up right and that there was something wrong with my digestive system. I didn’t even mention I was diabetic because I was afraid of being turned away again, which is fucked up I have to leave out a pretty important detail to be seen by the Czech medical system. She held her finger up to give her a minute and she went back into her clinical abyss.

The two of us shrugged. After a minute the sleepy nurse returned and motioned for me to come with her. This was twice the progress I had made at the last hospital, so it seemed promising. The emergency room here was modern but it had common communist features in certain areas. While most of the medical technology was updated, their measuring systems, color schemes, and signage was a bit archaic. She sat me in a chair where I spoke with a Czech doctor who was stationed at a computer. At his station was a beer mug. A large glass of beer with about an inch of what I assumed to be beer. Because let’s just fuck this night up a little more. Maybe the tired nurse was drunk, who knows. I messaged Kisha over Facebook Messenger to keep her updated on my progress and about the speakeasy ER I was cautiously waiting in.

The Czech doctor spoke slow English with me so we could both understand each other. I explained I had some serious joint pain in my hips, knees, and back, that my blood sugar had been very unstable for about two weeks, and that my stomach was hurting from the amount of liquid and food I was eating to remedy the bouts of hypoglycemia. He asked which medications I was on and I wrote down a list and dosages, all of which are known here in the Czech Republic. The nurse brought me over to a gurney and told me to lie down. She tested my blood pressure, my slightly elevated temperature, and listened to my breathing. She pounded on my back exactly where it hurt and massaged my stomach for signs of pain. She took some blood and even started to smile a bit as she entered her professional routine. The nurse walked away and returned from an old medicine cabinet with a glass one of these:

“We need your urine.”

Totally unaware this hospital also doubled as a center for alchemy in the 1900s, I heaved myself off of the gurney and towards the door marked “WC.” Inside the bathroom that was also a storage closet, I held the glass cylinder and sized it up to the toilet I was supposed to be using. Everything in Europe was tiny except for this glass cylinder. I had to do some surveying measurements before actually peeing because I wasn’t even sure I was going to be able to follow the nurse’s instructions exactly as she had planned. I moved around in the small space, crouching and eyeing and analyzing and studying. How am I going to pee in this?

Eventually I managed without knocking any shelves over or causing a scene and returned to the desk with the elusive elixir. I noticed the beer mug on the desk again. Maybe that was someone else’s pee, I thought. Maybe in this hospital, as long as you’re peeing into anything made out of glass, it counts as a valid urine sample. Maybe a Czech mystic will appear and grant me knowledge on future philosophy. Maybe this was like rubbing a lamp to them.

The nurse gave me more tests. My torso was x-rayed for the pain I was in and I was given a sonogram with an amount of lube only suitable for wrestling. The staff was nice but quiet. I wasn’t talking much just because I didn’t know if they could understand me, but when spoken to in English, I made sure to return my speech at the same speed. After resting for a bit longer under a hospital blanket that was most likely flammable, the doctor came back and told me I had a bacterial infection to be treated with antibiotics. At least the mystery was solved about why I was barely functioning over the last two weeks. No more math or diluting dosages to ensure safety. I even got a shot in my ass for the pain I was in. I’m still unclear what it was, but as a tattooed diabetic person, I can handle needles pretty well. The pain in my hips and knees subsided and I felt less tension in my stomach than I had earlier in the night. So far so good. Kisha and I thanked the nurse and doctor profusely and left the hospital as the birds were going crazy in the early morning dawn.

We took one of the trams that were now operating in the early morning to the 24 hour pharmacy. Less than three minutes and five dollars later, we were walking out of the pharmacy with antibiotics in hand. Our adventure ended at the Tesco near Kralovo Pole. We bought cheese and more snacks just in case my blood sugar was still going low. I’m so lucky to have Kisha here with me. She initially friended me on Facebook almost a year ago when I had just decided to move to the Czech Republic. I was being given an absurd amount of misinformation from Czechs, EU nationals, and non-EU citizens about how I should immigrate properly as an American, and as a fellow American expat, she set the record straight for me. She answered all of my questions patiently and took the time to explain the visa process, the trade license, and what life is like in Brno. We had been talking for roughly six months before we had even met at a coffee shop near my house. I couldn’t have done this without her and I tell my parents that all the time. There’s no way I could have reached the level of success I’ve had in a foreign country without her help. She took time out of her evening to take me to the ER for the whole night and had the patience to battle Czech medical bureaucracy one hospital at a time. I’m incredibly thankful for her friendship.

A few days later, I’m at home taking a few days off of work because the antibiotics I was given are creating a great wave of Kanagawa in my stomach. I’m no longer in pain but I’m extremely tired and getting back on a normal eating schedule that doesn’t include pounding an entire bag of Skittles once a day is a bit of a challenge. I’m drinking lots of fluids and my parents text me every few hours to see how I’m doing. I emailed my doctor about what to do with my digestive system so now I’m taking probiotics and antibiotics. I wonder if there’s just “biotics?” If I can untether myself from the bathroom for a few minutes, I should be able to go back to work on Thursday. I only have a few more weeks left at the school before I start my new job next month, and I really didn’t need my body to give up on me this week. I’m starting to go a little stir crazy from spending so much time resting in bed but I’ve been hanging out with kitty and we started watching war movies even before I found out Gunny died.

And so ends our third Czech healthcare system adventure. To sum up: if you’re going to die, just make sure you die at the correct hospital.

"Lord, beer me strength."

I've been sitting on this post for a while because I'm not sure how to address certain things without getting a lot of flak for them, but fuck it. 

I haven't been to an AA meeting in almost six months. Part of this is due to the geographic isolation of Brno and the lack of English speaking meetings. When I first arrived, I made a call to a number listed for expat meetings and discovered that because so few people attended, it eventually disbanded. Like many websites in the Czech Republic, the directory hadn't been updated in a few years. Larger cities such as Prague, Vienna, Warsaw, and Bratislava are more likely to have more than one English meeting since they have larger populations than Brno and many English speaking expats have chosen to settle in those places. So if I'd like to attend a meeting, the closest one is almost two hours away. 

I live in an alcohol dominated culture here in the Czech Republic. This wasn't my intention upon moving here because let's face it: if I'm going to relapse, this was a really expensive way to go about it. Czechs drink more beer than any place else in the world at roughly 43 gallons per person per year. If you lived here during the 13th century and stole hops, your punishment was death, and Pilsner style beers originated from the Czech city of Plzen. People often drink their beer out on the streets due to lax open container laws, and there's multiple pubs and restaurants specializing in the nation's obsession on every block . Drinking seems to be a way of life here. I'm not sure if it's solely based on alcoholism, but it's definitely conjoined with celebration. Christmas and Easter markets feature mulled spiced wine and different styles of Moravian lager. Even older pagan traditions incorporate more modern styles of liquid celebration, the next one being on the 30th of April where an effigy of a witch is constructed from straw and then burned to the ground to welcome the season of spring. Moravia, the historical country where Brno is located, is infiltrated every year by tourists looking for good wine and cheer, both of which are usually absent in their home countries.

To be honest, it hasn't bothered me that much. My obsession to drink is gone but I'm still very aware and alert of my surroundings. I can't let my guard down at anytime and I need to stay attentive if I'm going to maintain the current spree of not fucking up my life. I've turned down drink tickets at shows and no one seems to care if I ask for water, even though it is almost always served in a beer mug. After a show a while back, a few people outside were smoking a joint and they asked if I wanted to smoke. I politely declined and he said "I didn't know people could be sober from marijuana." Everyone's definition of "sober" is different, but I sluffed it off with "Well if I smoke then I'll definitely drink." They got a laugh out of it, I got a laugh out of it, and I continued on with my night. It would be silly to move to another country and think you're not going to encounter any kind of drinking or drug culture, but a short absent minded change of heart can quickly deter things from the path I've chosen for my life to take.

During my sobriety (I no longer use the term "recovery" because it makes me feel my decision to abstain from alcohol makes me weak, helpless, and powerless), there have definitely been a few evenings or circumstances which have led me to grit my teeth and feel like I am really in need of a meeting. When these moments arose, I was quick to talk with a sober friend or just message someone who supports my sobriety. I know what my triggers are, everything from old friends to sunflower seeds, and sobriety allows me to continue being sober, as redundant as that sounds. The reason I haven't been to a meeting in six months, or gone four hours out of my way to attend one, is because I have learned to cope with life's unfortunate circumstances as they come up, something the AA program draws you away from.

I first started going to meetings when I was in rehab because at the time, I didn't have a choice. All of the addicts and alcoholics would sit in a cafeteria and a former resident of our program would come in to discuss the "only three ways" of staying sober: going to meetings, getting a sponsor, and working the program. I was scared out of my wits. I certainly couldn't go back to the life I had barely maintained of drinking every day and destroying everything in my path, and if these people were speaking the truth, I needed to hike on those paths, too. My life depended on it, as I thought. 

My nickname in college.

I was in rehab for 21 days. Upon being released into the wild, I started attending one or two meetings a week depending on my schedule. At all of these meetings, this three-pronged approach of attending meetings, getting a sponsor, and working the steps was echoed throughout all of the rooms. But one narrative particularly stood out. Time and again, I encountered people (and I'm going to paraphrase because I still respect the anonymity of the program) who would say something along the lines of "You know I've tried to get sober eight or nine times now and this program really works. You gotta keep coming back and work the steps and get a sponsor and find your higher power." The problem with this statement is that the same person would say this every time between those eight or nine attempts of getting sober. Newly sober folks are thrust into the realm of Alcoholics Anonymous without even being asked what sort of path they would be interested in taking to sobriety. It's assumed that AA works as it's popular and many people who don't have the resources to go to rehab or treatment can attend for free. 

I've read the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous twice, once when I was "forced" to get sober at age 16 after I was caught for under age drinking and again when I entered treatment at 27. I underlined passages that made sense to me, or sentences that resonated with the person in me who really wanted to be sober. Little quips and phrases are common in the book and "The Program," as in there's always a proverb to accompany every problem someone brings to the table. Tough time staying sober for the long haul?

Take it one day at a time. But things are so complicated and I'm worried about drinking!

Easy does it. There are even entire chapters dedicated to atheists and women as they weren't equally represented in AA and were completely inferior to the white men who wrote the book prior to the last World War. I came into AA skeptical. As an atheist (that's probably the most pretentious way I've ever started a sentence), I don't believe in a god, gods, or anything that can assume a consciousness and change the direction of my life so that it becomes significant to me. My viewpoints aren't particularly militant and I don't go out of my way to address them unless I'm asked. The idea of finding a "Higher Power" didn't sit with me well. If I don't believe in religion or have a faith of any kind, how am I supposed to apply energy to something that is supposedly going to help me stay sober? 

One of AA's popular credos is "Well, your Higher Power can be anything. It can be a doorknob!" Which...doesn't sell that point particularly well. Later I'll be instructed to turn my will and care over to this doorknob "as I understand it" and expect it to alleviate me of the perils of alcoholism, a scientific problem in need of a scientific solution. I don't understand god because it doesn't exist for me. For a while I even tried making Jeff Lebowski my literal High(er) Power to no avail, just to see if I can really buy into what Bill W was attempting to do for people like me. Clearly AA didn't take other subsets of society into account when creating the literature pushed on people from the very beginning. I was getting uncomfortable following the program. Another popular AA motto is "fake it til you make it," and if you know me at all, I don't fake shit. In a way, I was expected to not only "check my beliefs at the door" and to follow a path to sobriety which I was told was the only path from the beginning. I couldn't see any correlation between 11 of the 12 Steps of AA and me staying sober. What did me divulging my entire sexual history, my fears, my wrongs, and my resentments to another person have to do with me drinking? What did me giving up my power and assuming powerlessness to a program keep me sober? What was the scientific evidence behind any of this?

Overtime, I started going to meetings less and less. I came to realize I didn't have to be dependent on AA to stay sober. As long as I was keeping myself busy, not isolating, and not putting myself in risky situations, I had this sobriety thing on lock. AA masks its acceptance of all people due to the Third Tradition (there are 12 Traditions, as well): the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. So in short, if you want to stop drinking, AA has a seat for you. However, if you have any disbelief in a Higher Power or have no interest in getting a sponsor, the judgement in that room will be paramount to any shame you've ever experienced. I was told I would drink if I didn't have a sponsor, and I haven't had a sponsor for two years. People knew I was skeptical of many different aspects of the program except for one, being AA is where I can meet other people like me. Unfortunately there aren't many other arenas I can navigate that can accommodate the same groups of people. Cruising the subreddit r/stopdrinking helped, and staying in touch with the sober people who did accept my different points of view also helped. 

So the less and less I came to meetings, the more and more people stopped talking to me. I had met numerous friends through the program over the 18ish months I was attending. I met people my own age, people who grew up in houses just down the street from me, and people who were adamant that following the Big Book was the only way to achieve sobriety. It seemed hard for people to understand that there was more than one path to achieve the same thing. AA isn't a one-size-fits-all program, and while it got me off on the right foot, it abandoned me in the long run. Even though there was a chair figuratively saved for me at every meeting, it was clear I wasn't welcome if I didn't strongly believe in the fundamental tenets. Watching people come back to meetings after they relapse was one of the most cringeworthy experiences I've ever had. Someone in the program would have a few months of sobriety and then come back to a meeting a while later and announce they only had a few days, or a week. The judgement in the room would become suffocating, face after face of growing, unanimous disappointment in someone who had they "came to meetings, got a sponsor, and worked the program" would have remained sober. In AA, there's a response to everything. "Well he worked the program but he didn't really try."

Only going to one meeting a week won't guarantee sobriety!" "The book says 'half measures availed us nothing' so of course they aren't sober -- they didn't follow the steps correctly!"

I knew I was socially cut out from the program and the people I met when I had my going away show in September. I had two previous sold out shows when I was producing One Laugh at a Time, a show featuring sober comics in whatever capacity as long as they were committed to sobriety. The sober community saw it as a chance for fellowship and enjoying comedy at the same time, and it was great to have people like me on the same line up. For my going away show, I had my favorite Seattle people perform with me on "Liz Czechs Out," the show that inspired the naming of this blog. I advertised for about a month and I was able to have it at the club I spent most of my time at. The crowd was reserved but fun and the other comics gave me a card before the night was over. After the show I thanked friends, family, old boyfriends, and former colleagues who came to celebrate my coming adventure. The audience filed out of the club and I finally had a moment to catch my breath, and that's when I realized that not one person I had met in AA during my two years in Seattle came to my show. 

The program that was supposed to free me of resentments was only creating them. Sometimes I meet sober people and they assume I'm in AA just based on the fact I'm sober. I don't trash the program or speak negatively of it to their face, but I politely imply I was able to find help for my sobriety elsewhere. One guy in Brno messaged me a while back after finding out I was sober. We exchanged some pleasantries but in the end, his tenacious attitude about AA was extremely off putting. He messaged me a while back asking "Still sober?" under the guise of care.

Yep, I'm still sober. I live an environment not conducive at all to sobriety yet I've fallen asleep every night without the use of alcohol. I show up on time 20 minutes early to everything, and I know when to separate myself from situations that might make me uncomfortable. I keep myself busy with writing, working, learning, and staying in contact with people who accept me for who I am, the beliefs I have, and the methods I choose to support sobriety. AA fronts itself as an all encompassing program, but after enough meetings and experience, I ultimately felt alone. I feel alone here in Brno sometimes, but this was me choosing to be alone. We all chose to be sober, so who cares about how we get there as long as it's the common end result? 

Dancing with St. Vitus

I feel like these updates are lacking the crescendo they used to have. Ever since I got my visa, things have quieted down quite a bit and I haven't been the busy bee I was when I arrived. Now I have a completely different agenda to more or less accomplish the same thing: achieve the correct paperwork and navigate the bureaucratic system for the right to legally work in the Czech Republic. I'm definitely on an expat plateau. Explateau? Whatever. 

The teaching job I've held since the beginning of this year has become wildly unpredictable. Usually when you imagine a teacher, you imagine someone who has the same hours as their students, maybe from 8 to 3ish in the afternoon. But language schools have to operate around life's other obligations, which are mainly work and family. There's no set schedule and sometimes students will schedule classes as they would with a therapist. Both receptionist and student have their pocketbooks out, flipping through dates to find a time in the future to conjugate verbs while still having fun. So this style of schedule leaves me to have no schedule of my own. Sometimes I work an hour in the morning and then six hours later I return to teach two courses in the evening. Other times I work from 2-8pm with no break. I don't have enough time to eat a meal or even a snack. I check my blood sugar in the middle of class because my schedule doesn't leave me time to sit down and actually pay attention to the inner workings (or non inner workings) of my dead pancreas. The limited and spontaneous availability I have has left me rescheduling appointments, not knowing if I can take gigs in other countries (it sounds drastic but it's like 60 miles away), and trying to create somewhat of a normal sleep schedule, which I've been chasing after for at least two decades. I don't have time for me and it's fucking exhausting.

Back in January, I interviewed for a manager position at AT&T. Yep, that AT&T. The telecommunications company has offices in both Brno and Bratislava, Slovakia, quite the surprise to someone who used to work at Comcast and thought positions with these places were limited to cubefarms in American metropolitan suburbs. The "interview" started with a group of roughly 30 bilingual people who were all interested in becoming a technical support specialist for the internet service AT&T offers to certain parts of the US. A few people had luggage with them as if they had come straight from the airport or train station, and I soon found out they actually had. A team lead told us to introduce ourselves, where we're from, and why we're interested in the job that requires English speakers B2 and above. Mostly everyone was Czech with a few people who actually flew in from France and Germany for the interview. It sounds ridiculous but when you think about it, flying anywhere in Europe doesn't take that long so they might as well attend an interview for a job in a country with a lower cost of living. Simply by the introductions, it was clear which candidates would be able to function in a job like tech support. When the pleasantries got all the way around to me, I realized I was the only native English speaker who had worked at a telecommunications giant. A lot of people stared at me. Why is this woman interviewing for a job she easily could have had in the United States?

To make sure we were actually capable of reading, writing, and speaking English, the team lead administered a test based on reading and listening. With twenty questions for each category, I found myself struggling with the most basic of knowledge. For instance, one of the questions involved listening to a woman describe a vacation to a beach, and we had to pick only one word to describe her experience. However, many options for the answer were synonyms. Casual, relaxed, breezy, low-key, and a few others were choices to choose from. But what exactly are they looking for? It wasn't the language that was throwing me off; it was the psychological mind games I needed to play in order to beat out non-native speakers for the same job. After everyone was finished, we were released for an hour and I did what any white girl with time to kill on her hands would do: go to Starbucks. 

The AT&T campus in Brno is located in a suburb known as Bohunice (BOH-hoo-nitz-uhh). There's a large sprawling mall and numerous medical facilities throughout the area of new commerce, and even though there's many plastic new shiny buildings out there, my favorite communism-looking building is right in the center of all of it. White with rails, simple windows, and a few panes of frosted broken glass, the medical center was a staple of what used to be sterile brutalism before 1989. I took some pictures and ordered a decaf latte in very poor Czech and waited for my pre-determined future at a new job with an actual schedule. 

When I returned from my hour alone, almost half of the candidates weren't to be found. Our team lead explained that those who hadn't passed the language test were dismissed from the rest of the interview. A few people looked at me as if I had something to do with their demise, but really I think they weren't surprised I passed, like a "good thing she survived" sort of a look. As a group, we were led into a lobby and then told to wait for an individual one-on-one interview with a manager. The woman I met had originally expatriated from the Philippines and married her Czech husband here in Brno. She looked at the experience I had listed from my CV and explained I was hired before I was even walked in that day. I spoke with her about submitting for the management position and she explained that once I complete the basic training and because of my native language, I can be transferred into the position. I also found out that being a native speaker was getting me about 15% more pay than the rest of the candidates who either had no technical support experience or mediocre English skills. 

What I'm most excited about is I'll be working at night for open business hours in the US. My shift will be from 11-8am so I can communicate with AT&T's customer base no matter which timezone they're in. Supposedly I'm also making more salary because the job is solely based at night. Night is when I'm most active. I'm writing this post at night, I have my best stupid ideas at night, and I try to at least learn something every night before bed. I can now offer my best potential on a Monday through Friday job. I never honestly thought I'd say "I want normal hours and zero unpredictability" but there I was interviewing for exactly that. The pay will be stable and the work will be familiar. 

In the coming weeks, I'll be filing for an employee card, which operates as its own visa. Right now, my trade license and my long stay visa both rely on each other for me to stay in the country and earn a living. But with AT&T, I'll be cleared by the Czech government to have an actual employer. The employee card needs to be renewed every two years, and I won't have to verify my funds with the government every year as they how much and when AT&T is paying me. They'll also provide my health insurance so it'll be included through my work and I'll no longer be on the socialized state system. Honestly the job can't start soon enough. Right now I'm in limbo between filing documents and waiting for my start date in May with no forward nor backwards progress and so we wait here on the plateau. 

The cool part about starting my job next month was that my mom and I both had the availability for her to come visit me for ten days. She's retiring in about ten months and she's looking forward to having the freedom to travel and spend time with family, meaning she has some vacation to burn through by the end of the year.

I was incredibly giddy the entire day. This was the first time anyone from the States had seen me in my new environment and I made sure to have things in a very presentable HGTV fashion. I literally cleaned my floors on my hands and knees, I dusted, vacuumed little nooks previously overlooked, and made myself into a real person who looks like they have the gumption and dedication to complete such a task, someone who really has their shit together. The last time I had been to the Prague airport was arriving on October 18th, almost six months ago now. It's is incredibly clean and almost looks like a convention center with giant cylindrical pillars and signs pointing to various amenities. They even had one of those ridiculously sized chess sets that you can play on the floor. And their bathroom was free. 

While I was on the train to Prague to pick her up, she was transferring in Frankfurt. Frankfurt, we both agreed, is the most absurd of European airports. Half-mall and half-travel checkpoint, it's an incredibly expansive place, leaving no room for tight connections. When I came over I also transferred in Frankfurt with a 90 minute connection and it was real tight, but my mom had some extra time to peruse duty-free whathaveyous and the vast plains of moving walkways. 

I toodled around in Arrivals with other people waiting for their respective passengers. The Prague Airport is divided into two terminals, flights from within the Schengen area and international flights from outside the Schengen. Since Frankfurt is Schengen, the hour long flight arrived on time. I watched the status on the arrival board of her plane, "Landed," Unloading," "Baggage." Spurts of passengers came out from behind the secure and opaque screen of customs a little at a time. Every little group I got excited and positioned myself unobstructed to be sure she could see me. At last she appeared with a tote and luggage. She looked so small next to everything she had packed for ten days of sightseeing in the Czech Republic. She looked tired, amazed. Everyone in my family is an experienced traveler but my mom had yet to see the former Czechoslovakia, and I felt settled in enough at this point to be somewhat of a reliable tour guide during her time here. 

We hugged for a long time. She's roughly my same height so our embrace with no intention of releasing seemed more reciprocal. After getting a good look at one another after our different yet varied travels, we got the first of many lattes at the airport while we waited for the bus to return to the main train station. We had about six hours of travel ahead of us with a bus, train, and then a cab ride back to my place in Brno. Our first meal consisting of Burger King fueled us for the journey and we arrived back home to a very excited kitty. 

The four days my mom was here in Brno were spent Easter market shopping, closely akin to the Christmas markets but with a bit more paganism sprinkled in with the food, spiced wine, colorful eggs, decorated switches used to hit girls in return for eggs, and porcelain products unique to Moravia. A lot of our time was spent sleeping in and relaxing with no set schedule because we knew Prague was going to kill us. We were planning on doing some serious damage in regards to sightseeing while in the Bohemian capitol. I traveled through the Czech Republic in 2009 but was on a pretty strict budget so my sightseeing was limited to cheap beer and Pall Malls. But our stay in Brno was eventful. My mom met a few of my fellow teachers at the school and one of my closest friends, we went to a cat cafe because Patrick just wasn't enough, and took a cruise through Spilberk Castle, one of many located in CZ. 

Czech Easter eggs designed by Jiri Zemanek

Over the few days my mom was in Brno, I realized that she's getting older. And yes, I'm aware of this phenomenon known as aging, but she was different from the last I saw her when we were crying in the airport in Seattle. She's slowed down a bit, both with her memory and her speed. Sometimes she would have a tough time keeping up with me during her visit. I've always been self-conscious of my speed when I walk because I've now had two ex-boyfriends who were quite eager to comment on it. I'm hardly ever in a rush. I've also spent so much time alone in Brno that I'm never around anyone that often to feel self-conscious with. Spending time with my mom made me more hyper aware, not just of my actions, but hers, as well. 

And then I started feeling guilty. Occasionally this pang of guilt or regret strikes and I feel like I made the wrong choice by moving so far away. In this case, I felt bad because I'm not with my mom anymore. I can't help her as she's getting older. I'm not immediately available if she needs assistance, reminders, or pertinent information. Staying in touch with her has been easier than I assumed but I think my shock of seeing her after almost six months made me realize I might not be able to see her in a time of need. It's the same thing with my new niece, Emily. I haven't met her yet and she isn't cognizant of her auntie who lives across the pond. I'm losing the chance to see her grow up, and sometimes it mades me incredibly sad and alone. A lot of expats will experience this while abroad and start to rethink their decisions, that their choice to separate from family and friends both geographically and emotionally will negatively affect others. Prior to leaving, I told myself I'd return to the US only under a few different circumstances: a family member getting seriously ill or dying, a zombie apocalypse originating in Russia, or a court order. Seeing my mom in her now more limited capabilities made me wonder if I'd be moving back to the US sooner than I thought, or what it will be like to have aging parents so far away, especially as the only child in one circumstance. 

I noticed this for most of my mom's visit but it didn't slow us down. In Prague we went to the Prague Castle and St. Vitus Cathedral which has left me particularly awestruck over the last week. I'm not sure if it's the crazy gothic overtones or its age or the stained glass to which Mucha contributed, but to me it's this evil building that is tall, maniacal, ominous, and threatening. Not because of the religious curiosities tied to it, but the massive presence it gives to the Prague skyline. It's like in Independence Day when the alien ship slowly covers Washington DC except St. Vitus has graced Bohemia with its brooding presence for almost 1,000 years. 

My photos from St. Vitus

My mom also got to see me on stage while in Prague, and I'm really happy she got to see one of the best sets I've had since I've been here. I booked a spot on a weekly Tuesday showcase and found out at the last minute I was headlining. Vir Das, from Conan and fucking Netflix, was in town and asked for time but at the last minute had a scheduling conflict, so they asked me to fill in. Kind of cool, I'll probably use that as a credit from now on. The show takes place in a popular hostel and it's free for guests to attend, so the show often has a large audience whose common language is usually English. I met another comic from LA who was on the show and we discovered we had a lot of people in common between us, so it was fun to network so far from home. And my set went great. I couldn't have asked for a better slot or audience. The audience was engaged, paying attention, a little drunk but happy and focused. I'm so much more comfortable on stage than when I first arrived, nervous and anxious over material that worked so many times which might no longer have potential in a non-English speaking country. But I've adapted, and I think that's kind of what all this is about. 

My mom and I separated at the Prague train station where she took the bus to the airport and I a train back to Brno. I had to teach two classes after I arrived, one at a lighting company out in the suburbs and another at the school itself. The lighting company cancelled on me 40 minutes after I arrived due to some Chinese bigwig in town and I didn't have anyone show up for my second class. Of course, I get off the train and my world immediately becomes less predictable, less calculated. I have four days off for Easter as the Czechs observe Easter on Monday as well as Good Friday on, well, Friday. I've been nursing a sinus infection in the mean time and tomorrow I go into a 25 hour teaching week, and I'm sure I'll be dead when it's finished. Until then, I have some cheese to eat and a kitty to annoy. 

Czech Healthcare Adventure! Part II

I've been on a real Bob Ross kick lately. My mom used to watch it when I was a baby and my grandfather painted along to his happy little creeks and cabins with roofs full of snow in his old age. There's a Twitch stream that plays all of the episodes, even the ones where Bob's son and his glorious mullet do a guest spot. I go to sleep at night listening to Bob describe a squirrel he rescued and named Peapod and his soothing ramblings about combining colors, techniques, and tales Florida and Alaska. It's very zen, something I've sought after for much of my life. 

YES, YES THEY ARE.

Today I went to my first "diabetologie" appointment. The Czechs are specific when it comes to medical care, meaning that instead of seeing an endocrinologist like I would in the US to treat Type 1, I see someone who specializes in only diabetes and not other endocrine disorders. It was a relief knowing I wouldn't have to explain my disease to a professional who may not know all of the ins and outs of dosages, regimens, numbers, and time tables. Unfortunately, this has happened before. It's like if you woke up during open heart surgery and told the doctor "here why don't you let me take over for a bit."

St. Anne's University Hospital, or"fakultni nemocnice u vs Anna v Brne" as I've learned to refer to but not pronounce, is a sprawling campus of old Soviet buildings, newer, pristine architecture, and baroque moldings near the center of Brno. The map I downloaded to find "Building J" was color-coded but also in Czech, so I did that thing where you walk one way while watching your location on GPS to see if you are indeed heading in the right direction. Building J did exist, however it was quite a hike around the campus to locate it. At one point I wondered if it was maybe like the Back Building in Mean Girls.

With a low ceiling and steel chairs lining the hallways, I wasn't sure if I was going to a diabetologist as much as I was going to be contacting any form of asbestos. These hallways had seen better days with their scuffed patterned floors and shredding yellow and orange wallpaper.

On Pinterest it might be referred to as"Shabby chic!" I found a hallway full of doors and outside each door was a vinyl bench with no form of support.

The door with my doctor's name on it had people going in and out of it so I figured this must be a good thing. They're not being wheeled out of the room with a respirator or a blue face. So far, so good.

Like if this room was a hospital.

I have now spent enough time here to know that when you see a chair or an area for waiting, that's where you wait, which sounds obvious but if you go further to investigate behind doors that aren't marked clearly, a woman named Petra may scold you in Czech until you just sit anywhere close by until you're officially retrieved. So I sat and waited outside. 

For Czech people, my last name is pronounced "Dawn-uh-hoo-ee." With the stress on the first syllable and no accessible diphthongs, I've learned to listen for various covers of my surname from people I don't know. A young nurse fetched me and my seemingly normal last name from the hall and brought me into a large examining room and office which didn't look like it belonged inside the semi-decrepit Building J. Brightly lit with new furniture, recently manufactured medical supplies and machinery, and surfaces free of dust or minerals, the nurse who spoke some English informed the doctor I had Type 1 and that I needed a new blood glucose meter and the appropriate test strips. Certain test strips only work with certain meters, and since I couldn't buy strips in Metric meant for an Imperial Measurement System meter, I needed a whole new kit. They spoke back and forth in Czech for a moment and then came the question: "Insurance?"

I signed up for state health insurance after my visa was approved, but my insurance card still hasn't arrived in the mail. I also didn't have anything on me that proved I was technically in the system, so in this circumstance, I basically didn't have insurance at all. I showed them my traveler's insurance, which only covers you in the event of a nuclear apocalypse or emergency treatment upwards of $200,000, but they shook their heads. They continued to talk in Czech as I brought out my bag of supplies filled with both types of insulin, spare needles, my glucose meter, and test strips. I could have just been some random person who came off the street, so I wanted to show them that I currently have the supplies needed for someone with Type 1. In broken English, the nurse said, "We give you a meter and test strips free, and in two weeks you come back when your insurance card comes, yeah?" 

Umm, fuck yeah. I smiled like an idiot and said "ano, ano prosim." Getting a free glucose meter and the accompanying strips in the United States means getting one from a diabetic friend or selling your first born and sometimes second born. One of the reasons people with diabetes let their care suffer during a financial crisis is because they simply can't afford the test strips, let alone the insulin. I test my blood sugar four to five times a day depending on when I'm eating and how long I'm awake. In the United States, a pack of 100 test strips without insurance is $129, meaning every 20 days, I'm out $129 if I actually want to manage and treat my disease instead of slowly die. Test strips are a HUGE inconvenience. You need them to figure out how much insulin to give yourself before meals and to find out if you really do have low blood sugar or if you're just imagining it. Getting 100 of them for free in addition to the hardware is a big deal. 

Woo! Czech glucose meter!

The nurse who spoke some English and another nurse who spoke zero English physically acted out how I'm supposed to use the meter. Even though I've been testing my blood sugar for almost eight years, I couldn't bring myself to stop their comedic safety demonstration. The Czech nurse poked her finger and said "owwwiiieeeee!" and then blew on it to exhibit the minor pain and inconvenience of pricking myself. "Into blood!" Aren't we all. They packed up my new kit and sent me into my doctor's actual office where he asked me some basic diabetes related questions: when were you diagnosed, at what age, what symptoms were you experiencing, how often do you go low, and which insulins are you on. I brought out my bag of supplies and showed him the insulins I use. One insulin I use is what's called a basal insulin and lowers me to a healthy "baseline" for 24 hours.

I use the other insulin before meals or when I'm consuming carbs, which can only be done every 4-5 hours. 

He recognized both pens and told me he would give me prescriptions when I came back in two weeks once my health insurance card had arrived.

Basaglar and Humalog, the two insulins I need to use.

Insulin pen with a teeny tiny needle.

Then my doctor told me, "I'm not going to charge you for today since you only needed a meter and there's no exam. When you come back in two weeks, your insulin prescriptions and the appointment will be covered. If you need any lab work done, that will be covered, too."

I was floored. I smiled at him and almost cried. Normally in the Czech Republic you need cash in hand, although not much, before any medical appointment if you don't have health insurance for your visit. I was expecting to pay something today, but not nothing. If this was the situation in the United States, I might need to start a GoFundMe to cover the costs of staying alive. I told him that it wasn't this easy in the US. "We know," he told me. 

Finally, a country that understands that staying alive is a basic human right. If we were brought into this world without consent, there should be an economic and social system in place to make sure we can be the healthiest capable people contributing to society. Why is that so hard to understand? If the US has such a hard on for being the greatest economy, shouldn't we have a healthcare system in place that takes care of the people who put forth the effort and time to stimulate a "great" country?

After gleefully leaving the hospital, I literally skipped back to the tram stop and went to teach for the afternoon. I showed the other teachers my new rig and spent the next few hours going over phrasal verbs, how "synonym" and "cinnamon" are two entirely different words, and the correct pronunciation of "hyperbole." I'll update again in two weeks after my next diabetology appointment. If the Czechs keep taking care of me like they are, I'm going to be here for a long time.