Strangers Health Exam

LIZ SAYS: Today was awful in some soul stripping, animal kind of way. It was the health exam. We waited with a herd of other people outside of the ANAEM (Agence nationale de l'accueil des étrangers et des migrations) building a half hour early. The building was locked. You could feel the tension gathered around the door. Everyone was pushing against the door, even though it was locked. There was a sign saying that it was closed from 12-1:00. Everyone from everywhere in exotic clothing and plain old jeans. Babies with mothers, girls in makeup, older men with knit caps, all pressed against a door that was locked.
When the office workers came to unlock it, of course, it opened out into the crowd. Forcing those pushing from the front to press back into those pushing from the rear.
I was being pressed by a girl who was shorter than me but seemed to feel that she had to push through me. That was the beginning of the downward pull on my humanity. Once through the door, it was the same ugly interior as all the other official buildings we had been in. This building did seem newer inside, but with the same yellow green gray sallow palate.
I had all my medical records, including x-rays (which seem to weigh a ton). I had collected them before I left the US. I had spent the last 2 days fretting over medical information, trying to figure out how to say things in french I couldn’t even say in english. Drug names, in english, brand name and what the drug is for in french. Are vitamin names the same in french, how do you spell glucosamine?
And today was my last day on my antibiotic. I was just finishing the cold/flu that everyone here seems to have. It lasts a very long time, it was a nasty cold with a lingering residual cough and respiratory infection. I knew they were going to do a chest x-ray, if nothing else, so I was worried that my asthma would flare up just in time for the photo shoot.
When we got up the gray stairs to the lime and canary room with the gray floor, it was at least sort of sunny. Everyone had to walk past the desk to form a line at the opposite end of the room. There were chairs in between bolted to the floor at a couple of places in the center of the room, so it made figuring out what to do simultaneously instinctive and counterintuitive.
Once in line, they took some of the papers and told us to sit. Other people were led directly into another room and the door was shut.
Okay.
The desk workers were having some sort of argument. They were saying each other’s names in that way that angry couples or mothers do when they are entirely too irritated. Everyone waiting for their appointments had no idea what to do, except to queue up and try not to react to the fury of the people calling their names.
I was madame cattee.
Once I realized that was me, I followed the other two people who had been called into a small hallway with 3 doors, like some ancient game show. I looked around for someone and found each room had another door. You could hear sounds of machines nd people talking on the other side. I stepped into the middle little double doored space and there were my papers in a little bin on the door.
A woman stuck her head in and told me to lock the first door. I turned the lock but it wasn’t good enough, she stuck her head in a couple of more times and then just locked it herself. Once she shut her door, I realized there were instructions on it in 6 or so languages.
Take off all your clothes to the waist, remove jewelry, tie your hair up in a high ponytail. Ponytail? I had nothing to tie my hair up with except my medical records!
No robe, no paper dress, no nothing. I was taken into the x-ray room which turned out to be on the other side of the door. Lead by the arm up to a paper covered machine and pressed against the machine, adjusted, with no words, just shoved against the machine. I held my breath and waited.
Buzz, cachunk,cachunk and I was directed back into the tiny yellow dressing room.
I put my clothes on and met my husband back in the main room.
He had had an x-ray, now we were waiting for something else. We were sent to different rooms. I was weighed, had my height taken, given a blood test for diabetes, given an eye test.
He got none of this. I was asked several questions, he was asked very little.
The whole thing seemed very random and dehumanizing.
It was very strange because it just hit me once we left. I was immediately tired and I felt ugly, like something ugly had just happened. It wasn’t the worst thing in the world just not the way you want to be treated.
The verdict? Well, come back in 30 days.
I guess we don’t have anything you can see on an x-ray and they let us keep them.
Free lung pics! Cool.