As I mentioned earlier in the blog, I was hospitalized for a week a couple weeks ago now, a completely unexpected situation that I had only graspings of knowledge about how to deal with.
Of course I know how to be admitted to a hospital. I just didn't know how to do it HERE.
Not to get too into the nitty-gritty of my health care logistics, but I have an Israeli health care plan under my fake living-in-Jerusalem identity, address...life. All my interactions with doctors transpire within this false universe - those typical chit-chats about Jerusalem, my neighborhood, my work, are all lies. It sucks to lie to doctors. But so many things suck here. This is just part of the Israelistine deal.
So when I started feeling sick, my friend drove me into Jerusalem to my doctor's. He referred me to the Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital, a famous and world-renowned Israeli research hospital nestled in a formerly-Palestinian hamlet above Jerusalem. My friend and I, another American, non-Jewish, non-Arab woman (she's actually Mexican, of all things) trundled from waiting area to waiting area to emergency room treatment area back to waiting area for hours, lying through out teeth as doctors and nurses asked us where we lived, what we did, etc. A veritable parade of falsities. It was July 4th, so my friend, a truly beautiful woman, was in a short red dress and heels. I'm sure we made a scene as we laughingly falsified our narrative in patriotic garb. Except when a nurse was Arab - then, in Arabic, we'd happily tell them that we lived in Ramallah, though with a hasty and almost frantic caution to not put it in my file. This is what I am trying to get at - while I was busy getting tested for and realizing that I had a very serious illness, most of my panic was driven by the deep fear of being "caught" at being on Team Palestine. If these people were injecting me with radioactive dyes and IVs and deciding the fate of my medical future, I desperately wanted, and needed, to keep the charade up.
About 10 hours later I found myself lying in a gurney in the hallway next to a nurses' station with an IV in my arm - my Palestinian boyfriend trying desperately to find Arabic-speaking doctors he can negotiate with about a bed, a room, my condition - anything - while an Orthodox Jewish American family worried over their elderly father just next to me. Information disadvantages were non-discriminatory, it seemed.
I was completely freaked out at this stage. It was one in the morning, I was exhausted and overwhelmed. The fact that I am part of no tribe in this land was desperately obvious. I was trying to be brave, but after my boyfriend left I put my head under my blanket and silently wept. I wept out of fatigue, I wept out of fear, but mostly I wept because I was alone in a hospital in a land I feel more alien in than anywhere else I have ever lived and just wanted so intensely to feel a sense of at least belonging there. I am not Jewish, I am not Arab - all I do is raise questions. And the last thing you want when in the hospital is to have to justify your place in a gurney in a hallway at 2 am. But so I did.
I spend a night there I honestly don't ever want to recall, so will choose to gloss over it by saying it was horrible and moving on.
Finally, at around 6 am, a brusque nurse hovered over me and said, "they found you a room. I am glad for you". The relief I felt...oof, it POURED through me. I might have cheered a little bit. Who knows, I had spent all night in a florescent-lit hallway, my sheep stuffed animal clutched in my arms, wondering how in the hell I had made such poor life decisions. Quickly, oh so quickly, the cloud lifted.
I have read many pieces on personal experiences with the complexities of this land, including my friend Tanya's on giving birth to a Palestinian-Jordanian-American baby in Israel (a must-read and good context for my own story), but mine was, and is, different from any I have read. I ended up having a fantastic experience in the hospital for the duration of my six day tour - perhaps due to the fact that my (skilled and charismatic and even, dare I say, charming) team of Israeli surgeons had no idea of my real life here. I don't know the counterfactual so I can't say. All I know it was the one place I've been in my ENTIRE time here where I felt everyone could just get along. Palestinian nurses healing old Jewish grandmas; Israeli doctors treating young Palestinian men; women in the veil walking alongside men in Orthodox hats, all off to see people they care about. I have a few vignettes:
Of course I know how to be admitted to a hospital. I just didn't know how to do it HERE.
Not to get too into the nitty-gritty of my health care logistics, but I have an Israeli health care plan under my fake living-in-Jerusalem identity, address...life. All my interactions with doctors transpire within this false universe - those typical chit-chats about Jerusalem, my neighborhood, my work, are all lies. It sucks to lie to doctors. But so many things suck here. This is just part of the Israelistine deal.
So when I started feeling sick, my friend drove me into Jerusalem to my doctor's. He referred me to the Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital, a famous and world-renowned Israeli research hospital nestled in a formerly-Palestinian hamlet above Jerusalem. My friend and I, another American, non-Jewish, non-Arab woman (she's actually Mexican, of all things) trundled from waiting area to waiting area to emergency room treatment area back to waiting area for hours, lying through out teeth as doctors and nurses asked us where we lived, what we did, etc. A veritable parade of falsities. It was July 4th, so my friend, a truly beautiful woman, was in a short red dress and heels. I'm sure we made a scene as we laughingly falsified our narrative in patriotic garb. Except when a nurse was Arab - then, in Arabic, we'd happily tell them that we lived in Ramallah, though with a hasty and almost frantic caution to not put it in my file. This is what I am trying to get at - while I was busy getting tested for and realizing that I had a very serious illness, most of my panic was driven by the deep fear of being "caught" at being on Team Palestine. If these people were injecting me with radioactive dyes and IVs and deciding the fate of my medical future, I desperately wanted, and needed, to keep the charade up.
About 10 hours later I found myself lying in a gurney in the hallway next to a nurses' station with an IV in my arm - my Palestinian boyfriend trying desperately to find Arabic-speaking doctors he can negotiate with about a bed, a room, my condition - anything - while an Orthodox Jewish American family worried over their elderly father just next to me. Information disadvantages were non-discriminatory, it seemed.
I was completely freaked out at this stage. It was one in the morning, I was exhausted and overwhelmed. The fact that I am part of no tribe in this land was desperately obvious. I was trying to be brave, but after my boyfriend left I put my head under my blanket and silently wept. I wept out of fatigue, I wept out of fear, but mostly I wept because I was alone in a hospital in a land I feel more alien in than anywhere else I have ever lived and just wanted so intensely to feel a sense of at least belonging there. I am not Jewish, I am not Arab - all I do is raise questions. And the last thing you want when in the hospital is to have to justify your place in a gurney in a hallway at 2 am. But so I did.
I spend a night there I honestly don't ever want to recall, so will choose to gloss over it by saying it was horrible and moving on.
Finally, at around 6 am, a brusque nurse hovered over me and said, "they found you a room. I am glad for you". The relief I felt...oof, it POURED through me. I might have cheered a little bit. Who knows, I had spent all night in a florescent-lit hallway, my sheep stuffed animal clutched in my arms, wondering how in the hell I had made such poor life decisions. Quickly, oh so quickly, the cloud lifted.
I have read many pieces on personal experiences with the complexities of this land, including my friend Tanya's on giving birth to a Palestinian-Jordanian-American baby in Israel (a must-read and good context for my own story), but mine was, and is, different from any I have read. I ended up having a fantastic experience in the hospital for the duration of my six day tour - perhaps due to the fact that my (skilled and charismatic and even, dare I say, charming) team of Israeli surgeons had no idea of my real life here. I don't know the counterfactual so I can't say. All I know it was the one place I've been in my ENTIRE time here where I felt everyone could just get along. Palestinian nurses healing old Jewish grandmas; Israeli doctors treating young Palestinian men; women in the veil walking alongside men in Orthodox hats, all off to see people they care about. I have a few vignettes:
- On being reminded that this place can surprise you: My American friend (the one who was with me in the ER) and her Palestinian boyfriend S. came to visit in the hospital. My nurse came in to change my IV while they were there. The nurse was young and cool, and we were all chatting as she did her work. S. asked her if she'd ever been to Palestine. My friend and I shushed him with panic. The nurse didn't hear him over our shushes, and asked him to repeat his question. Despite our frenzied and whispered pleading, he asked her again: "Have you been to Palestine?" If you don't understand why this is a loaded question, pull thyself from under thy rock and refer to my previous blog on To Palestine or Not to Palestine here. Otherwise, you can imagine the two second heart attack I had after S. asked his question the second time - until the (Jewish Israeli) nurse responded with a laugh and told us how she and her parents had in fact accidentally driven into two major Palestinian cities while on road trips - and then how she was almost engaged to a Palestinian from the north, willing to convert to Islam for him, had her family's blessing, dated him for three years, until his family said no and married him off to a nice Muslim Arab girl. Her heartbreak was visible. Oh, oh - the nuances and complexities of this place.
- On how some things change and some things stay the same: My Russian Israeli nurse had a bedazzled nurse's uniform with gems instead of buttons. And bedazzled claw-like nails. Awesome.
- On being Catholic in a Jewish/Muslim world: Throughout my stay, but especially on Friday, the Jewish holy day, religious Jewish people kept coming into my room and offering me tea and prayers and food and other stuff. It was really nice but a bit disconcerting, as I wasn't allowed to eat or drink, I can't read Hebrew, and a few of them somehow determined I wasn't Jewish and renegged on their prayer offer. I mean, I'll take any prayer I can get. That was one thing. Next thing: part of being Catholic is relying on pagan-like ritual and relics and icons and saints and such. Thus, the most logical and rational thing I could do to help myself heal was tape my one of my Saint Anthony cards I carry with me to exactly the spot on my body where I was sick with medical tape I stole from the nurse's station. Duh. Except, I kept getting woken up by non-Catholic (or even Christian) doctors who would lift up my shirt to prod me and be utterly startled by a holographic Saint Anthony staring back at them. Hilarious, embarrassing, suggestions of finally being The Other - so many things. So many things, often so early in the morning. Whatever - I started feeling better the day I taped old Saint Anthony to me, so it was obviously the right decision. Also, the one Palestinian Christian nurse I had got a total kick out of it, and thus spent 45 minutes showing me videos of his kids on his cellphone. Win.
- On finally getting released: I cried a few tears of relief as the trash and burnt tire smells and video-game-like traffic of Ramallah greeted me as I crossed the checkpoint back into Palestine. At least here, I could be myself: another American expat, just trying to find home.
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