A
Cup of Sorrow
There they were again – those
same red circles on the skin. I
had already seen them on two
other orphans within a month, at
the Doctors of the World clinic
in St. Petersburg.
Not that you would have known it
was a clinic.
“Why is there no sign on the
door?” I asked.
“Then the sick people would
come,” the permanent staff
protested.
“Isn’t that the point of a
clinic?” I asked later of the
ex-translator who was
theoretically supervising the
clinic.
He could have walked off a
French movie set, he was so
fabulously Francophile, but he
never showed up at the clinic he
was supposedly supervising. When
choosing someone to run a
business in Russia, the person
who behaves the most like you is
not necessarily the best person
for the job.
The clinic was necessary because of Russia’s internal
passport system. Under this
system, citizens only get local
rights (voting, healthcare and
the right not to be summarily
arrested and “deported”), if
they have a visa granting
permission to live where they
do. If your parents were not
from St. Petersburg, (or if you
had lost your passport), you
were denied access to any
medical care in St. Petersburg
other than a stay in jail.
Even if care were available, it
would only be in return for
“gifts.” Any doctor in the U.S.
will tell you that Russian
patients are famous for giving
gifts, but this charming custom
has dark origins in a world
where care can only be obtained
through bribery.
For three months, I cut the hair
of the orphans so that they
would not be spotted and beaten
by the cops. I administered
pregnancy tests and ushered the
lucky winners to the national
clinic, (with a “gift”) where
they would receive abortions
without anesthesia. I made the
mistake of following one to
observe — once.
“You stupid girl,” the
gynecologist said, punctuating
her words with an especially
hard scrape of the squealing
young girl’s womb. “She has
golden hands,” her Syrian
fellow-in-training nodded,
looking over my shoulder with an
appreciative smile.
“This is her third time here,
and she is not yet fourteen,”
the gynecologist said in
response to my shocked
expression. “If I make it
pleasant for her, she will just
come back again.”
I stayed at the clinic, giving
out antibiotics for presumed
syphilis, and making on-site
visits to the forests. There,
prides of homeless girls passed
the summer with only as many
boys as they needed to keep the
local men off their backs.
Sometimes there would be one
male for every four or so
females, and sometimes one large
and lucky adolescent was enough.
The most fortunate girls had a
healthy male, while for the rest
there were antibiotics. But to
solve the problem, even
temporarily, the whole pride
needed to be treated at once.
These apparently contagious
rings were a bright spot in an
otherwise dismal summer. They
were going to make me famous.
Garren-rings, I thought I’d call
them, or maybe I would name them
after one of my professors.
The rings were not itchy, like
ringworm. They were not warm,
like an infection. They were not
painful. And, most excitingly,
they were not in any medical
textbook I could lay my hands
on.
Unfortunately, they also seemed
to be mostly harmless, and
tended to resolve on their own.
I would never be as famous as
Dr. Parkinson, or Dr. Alzheimer,
or even Lou Gehrig.
But this new case was more
exciting. These rings hurt, and
were even blistering in spots.
Suddenly, I worried that I might be witnessing the beginning
of a new plague. The Garren
plague. Perhaps it was sexually
transmitted. I imagined a whole
generation of people using my
name as an excuse for safe sex –
“Sorry, but you never know who
might be Garren-positive.”
I called in one of the clinic
doctors. Not that she would be
able to solve the riddle —“We
pretend to work, and they
pretend to pay us,” was an
inside joke at the clinic — but
at least I could name the plague
after her.
She looked at the rings, shook
her head, and said: “The cups
were too hot.”
Strangely, I knew immediately
what she was talking about. I
had not heard about cupping in
medical school, but I did
remember seeing “Dangerous
Liasons,” a film about 18th
century France in which Michelle
Pfeiffer screamed in anguish as
glowing red-hot cups were
applied to her lovely backside.
As the hot cups cool, suction
develops. This supposedly sucks
out the evil humors, which were
thought by Hippocrates to cause
illness. Cupping is still a
widespread cold remedy in rural
China, and was common in the
U.S. as recently as the Civil
War. And here I was working at a
clinic where my colleagues were
performing this procedure on a
regular basis.
Maybe I would have expected
cupping in a rural backwater.
After all, Russia is like a
geographic time machine: If you
want to know what life was like
in Moscow 20 years ago, go to
the suburbs today. If you want a
glimpse of life in Russia 50
years ago, you have to drive 50
miles out of Moscow. And if you
drive five hundred miles, you
can relive the Middle Ages.
In eastern Ukraine, I heard
doctors wishing aloud, without a
hint of irony, that they had
become tour guides. The Urals
were where the chief surgeon of
the hospital I worked at in St.
Petersburg had gone to
“practice” removing rectums
until he became proficient.
But this was the cultural
capital of Russia, and at a
Western-funded clinic to boot. I
protested cupping to no avail.
I explained to the orphans that
cupping could leave them
scarred, and had been proven
useless in modern studies. And
then I packed up my bags and
returned to America. It was the
end of my volunteer term.
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ARTICLE TOOLS |
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CONTRIBUTORS |
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Dr. Josh Garren,
a father of three (on
the last count) lives
and works in Boston, MA.
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