The only doctor with (well controlled, admittedly) God syndrome that I met in the entire epic of saving my butt, he did my coronary angiography. They shave your wrist and the area around one groin, disinfect it with a large amount of iodine, put you under an X-ray machine, insert thick needles into the most important blood vessels in your body, inject a harmless dye, wait for it to reach the heart, observe, take several images, take out thick needles, then they wipe you a little, bandage the bleeding places and put you back in bed. This is how they measure the narrowing of blood vessels. It depends on whether they will insert "stents", solid tubes, into the places of narrowing of the blood vessels and send you home without incisions on the body, or whether they will have to bridge the narrowing with surgery. That decision, if the situation is not completely clear on the coronary angiography, is made by the council of one of the clinics in Belgrade that perform such procedures, so if they decide to operate, as soon as you meet all the conditions (condition of the lungs and cardiovascular system, chronic diseases, etc.) and open appointment, they will transfer you to the clinic that accepted the job. However, it is not always easy.
Many patients suffer from a whole host of other illnesses and are difficult to condition for surgery. They are often admitted to the hospital, where a new problem is discovered (or an old one is activated), then they are released home because they cannot intervene, so that they can then treat the condition, and so often for months, sometimes even longer. Waiting for major surgery without any idea of when it might happen, with the knowledge of the daily possibility of an abrupt end, is psychologically very exhausting. When my roommate, a pleasant man with gentle eyes from Banat, was wheeled back to Coronarno to recover after having stents installed, he told me for an hour in detail how he had been treating some problem with his veins for two years in order for this to happen, and then just made me cry.
The demigod of coronary angiography, a pretty nice and funny guy by the way, told me as I lay on the table like a vat of paint that he couldn't tell if the narrowings (plural, I didn't know that) were for stents or surgery and that he would decided by the council of the on-call cardiovascular clinic. The Clinic for Vascular Surgery of the Clinical and Hospital Center of Serbia, the popular "Second Surgery", was on call. The director of that clinic, Dr. Svetozar Putnik, took me as a patient. I first heard about him when the man who managed my coronary unit during a visit told the others, in a rather significant tone, that my case was "taken over by Doctor Putnik". That was all he said, but he did it with a sentiment that slightly exceeded even respect. That was unusual enough for my reporter brain to take note. Narrowing of my blood vessels? Ninety percent, said the same doctor. If I wondered why I was panting up the stairs, I no longer had to. I ended up in the hospital because of the attack, but many of our fellow citizens simply walk around with such strictures and collect tests, scans, examinations and documentation for months in order to schedule their surgeries, also months in advance. During that time, they go to work, cook, drive...
MORALITY AND VIOLATION OF BISCUITS
The same day I was moved to another room thanks to no more seizures. That room had normal windows and I, after several days and nights spent as if in an elevator, under artificial light and without contact with the outside world, after long nights filled with heavy thoughts, strange sounds and dramas of the struggle for human life, lay down in bed next to window and saw the hospital circle with grass and trees. I don't believe I've ever felt that level of appreciation for a tree before.
My morale has risen significantly. I was almost happy. I immediately snapped a frivolous selfie with my adoring Maya window and began making plans for the rest of my life, post-surgery. Too soon, I knew, but I was grasping at every straw. Or a tree. What happened.
During this time, Maya was trying to determine what was happening with the cursed booklet. At each visit, the sisters, whose job it is to look for directions and booklets, asked me what was up with that. However, no one could determine that. Although it was clearly visible on the RFZO computer system that I was insured, even though the employees there told Maya that everything was fine, it was not visible in the system that the health centers and hospitals see. No one understands what it is about. The operation is certain, but it cannot even be scheduled without complete documentation. Maja goes to the health center with a printed page of the RFZO website, but the doctor simply does not give her instructions and that's it. In the jargon of sports journalists - "there were unpleasant scenes". Hypochondriacal and nervous, I began to obsess over the damn booklet.
In my new room there was a woman, eighty years old, an Albanian who came to Belgrade thirty years ago, only for her husband to die soon and leave her with three children, without a job or income. One of the sons died, he was run over by a car when he was a boy. She barely speaks Serbian, and her remaining son later told me that he speaks Albanian as well. Somehow she raised children and in that struggle she had no time for the finer aspects of any language, but neither did she have time for her health. I listened to the doctors and nurses about her ailments. There were more, a few really heavy ones. For her, however, that hospital was an incredibly foreign and frightening place. Scared, confused, helpless and sad, she looked at everyone in medical clothes with great anticipation, hanging on to their every word, struggling to understand them, passionately wanting to go home. Her health culture was truly unusual - although she has very high blood sugar, which the doctors were trying to lower so they could work on her many problems, every night from the direction of her bed came a mixture of rustling cellophane and crunching hundreds and hundreds of grams Biscuits for secretly satirizing him, so in the morning she was persistently surprised that her blood sugar was so high and swore she hadn't eaten anything. When she wasn't eating biscuits, she spent her nights sobbing herself to sleep.
photo: b. ChechenJOURNALIST IN THE HOSPITAL ON THE END OF TOWN: Author in the coronary ward and a view of the hospital park
YOU PUT SOMETHING ON THE FLOOR AND SLEEP
The sisters, except for the couple who lead the shifts, are all very young. Right from high school. The more experienced ones have gone en masse, some abroad, some to private hospitals, where they may not be treated as expendable, protective gloves during the pandemic. They study, they fight. They are very different, of course. One is silent and works, but knows everything that is asked of her, like a doctor. The other one has been there a little longer, leading a shift, but it is also clear to her that she is doing it "muscle" and that it would be better if she had more experience, so she is constantly worried. The third is cheerful and the queen of talking about weather and traffic, she dresses like something between an aunt and a princess of the rest of the middle class, everything she does looks easy and precise, in short - a walking balm for patients. But there are also those for whom it is difficult to understand how they got there. Ivana (name changed) has a hairstyle from Japanese comics that goes in several directions at once, four bracelets on one hand, at least twice as many on the other, and each nail is a different color. It's hard for her. She seems like a real, authentic rebel, a wild child who is just different. She somehow ended up in the coronary care unit, where everyone does the same things according to the same strict rules, and the room for diversity is limited to nails and hair. She has that little, childlike bounce in her walk, as if her ankles have springs built into them. And when she recognized Anthony Borden on the cover of my book, the TV chef who travels the world and tells us stories about it, one of the last rock and roll rebels of popular culture, she literally jumped on those springs of hers. What is she doing here?
On the first night in the new room, however, one of the brownies on my hand broke, right in the vein. It caused an ugly swelling and Sister Irena came to look at it. She reassured me and said that she would come to take care of it when she did the rest, and then disappeared into the whirlwind of work. I watched her occasionally move her hand full of something. He has the eyes and movements of a boy on the playground, like those girls who prefer to play football. She is older than the others and constantly comes to the aid of the younger ones in an unpretentious and friendly way. He handles a difficult patient from the corner of my room with such ease and experience that I hardly managed not to laugh.
Around nine in the evening, when everyone else was settled, she showed up with a new brownie and everything she needed to solve the problem. It took a while, the needle had to be pulled out of the vein, so we talked.
"During the corona, the coronary ward was a covid ward since the beds have oxygen supply. It was... It was difficult, Branko. Everything was too little. The bed, the nurses, the doctor... (Raise your hand a little and hold your finger here like this.) We got sick one after the other, some even died. But we worked, you know, without any questions. That's what we exist for, that's what we studied for. I was on the verge of shooting so many times that I don't even remember how many."
Irena works with gloves, which makes the tricky business with my vein even more tricky. I note that out loud.
"Well, back then we worked with two, sometimes three pairs of gloves. Branko - you don't feel anything! Nothing! You have to concentrate with all your might on your fingers. Patients were dying, Branko, I've been working for years, but so many deaths, you know, you know. (Make a fist, please.) You're running, you're sweating, you're barely breathing under three masks... Those people on respirators - few of them survived."
And that's where it stops. He wipes his forehead with the back of his hand, looks me in the eyes and says:
"Those were extended shifts, sometimes we didn't go home for several days. You find a corner somewhere, spread something on the floor and sleep, like that under a mask, with gloves on."
The nightmare that came out of her, some details of which I will spare your thoughts, unfortunately did not end at the hospital gate. Because while some of us applauded them every night...
"After a long time, they give me two days to go home and be with my husband and children. First, I slept for a long, long time, and then my friend called me. We have known each other since childhood, we hang out as a family, our children are there somewhere. The woman says: 'Hey, are you coming for your birthday?' I - I don't understand. I don't think I heard right. What kind of birthday, woman? It's her child's birthday and they're celebrating, it, all the friends are coming, the kids, the cake, everything! I ask her: 'And the corona?' 'What a crown, bro, that's a fol'. I tried, Branko, to explain to her, really. There's no way. I invite the godfathers, they do the same - they are going to a birthday party, 'what a corona'. You know, I didn't tell them what was happening and what the situation was, so come on. But like this... I don't have many friends anymore'. I'll write you just one more thing about Irena - you want her by your bedside if needed. Just the way she is.
READY FOR OPERATION
The night shift starts around five in the morning with a furious big preparation, blood sampling and everything else for handing over the shift. At 4.15:XNUMX, however, Ivana's wonderful hair peeks through the door of my room. I pretend to sleep. He ran up to an old, fully awake Albanian woman with some kind of diaper in her hands and sat down on the bed: "Hello", she whispered, "let me fix you up a bit". She took out a comb and a few other things, and then brought some soapy water, a sponge and a towel. She gently raised her to sit, "bathed" her, all the while very business-like, but also gently saying: "Now sit like this. Move your hand, please. Head up"... The old woman obediently did everything and watched with a mixture of suspicion and love. Ivana carefully ran the sponge over her hands and face, and then very slowly and gently patted her with a towel, soaked up the water and soap, wiped her hands and neck. Suspicion left the grandmother a long time ago. He looks lovingly at Ivana and cuddles, like a kitten, cooing something quietly to her. Then Ivana found another nightgown and changed into it, and finally opened the dressing table, took out a comb and slowly combed her old, long-dyed old hair. Then she rubbed some pomade on her face, smeared her hands, put two more unruly locks in place, massaged her face a little more pretending to fix it, and then stood up, took three steps back, put her hands on her hips, suddenly she turned her head to the side and looked at her grandmother: "Well, you're really cute." On the bed sat a pile of rags with two deeply gaping, grateful and watery eyes focused on a strange night angel with colorful fingernails and a magical comb in his hands. Tears flowed down the grandmother's cheeks to the corners of her mouth smiling with the deepest emotion a human being can feel. The happy little girl trapped in the treacherous body of an eighty-year-old old woman radiated humanity, gratitude and love. Ivana approaches her, lays her gently on the pillow, covers her, tucks her in, straightens the sheets, takes everything off the tape into the drawer so that it will be tidy for the visit, puts her hand on her head as if stroking a child, winks at her, says: "Hi" and jumps out of the room. room, as she came.
When I was being transferred to the clinic, I wrote the date and a big “Thank you” in Borden's book and repeated it verbally and sincerely as I gave it to her. It's like I gave her an iPhone 15 pro. She handed the book to her friend, holding it firmly with both hands, and uncontrollably exclaimed loudly: "Look!" Then she hopped away to show it to the others. Maybe her fellow rebel Anthony will take her, at least for a while, to the far and strange corners of the world, so that her difference will rest a little and give her the strength to prepare perhaps the last touching thing in life for someone else, like she did for my old roommate, an Albanian heroine from Sremčica from the far outskirts of a big city. Ivana and her friends lead patients by the hand through illnesses, traumas and encounters with death.
The next day, Maya opened a few more doors, some with her foot, and sorted out the cursed booklet. As for my coronary unit - I was ready for surgery.
