Carry on Kafka

Chaos, grime, and a man outside smoking with a fresh tracheotomy (and he's not the only one I've seen): Welcome to Taksim Square hospital.

Taksim hospital is state run but appears not to be state funded. There were hundreds of people in hundreds of queues, waiting for clinics and doctors with too many patients, whcih they couldn't find. Nobody knew where to send you or what was going on. You went to one window to get a form to take to another window to get a ticket to take to another office, then another office, another window, another office in the basement then back to the same window at which you started. I expected at one point to open a door to see a human brain in a pyramid or a half man/half pig moaning in bed. It was all reassuringly familiar.

Ayla and I were approaching the last stages of getting our documents for the Turkish part of our wedding. We had already been to three separate places, one of which was to get an x-ray to prove we didn't have TB. I already knew I hadn't contracted TB because I wasn't consumptive nor wrote romantic poems. The radiographer and the receptionist at the clinic were one in the same, and x-rayed the four-man batch at once without leaving the room or changing the film. For the modest sum of 20YTL I got to stand on a pneumatic plinth, hear a doorbell ring and get photographed by what looked like a large reflecting telescope. Bingo, no TB.

Having popped my pants down, hopped up on the bed and had many a quack have a little look at the old chap I am accustomed to exposing myself to the medical profession. The young Muslim couple in the same group as us were not so comfortable. The bride was terrified and humiliated at having to strip to her underwear in public her groom was angry that he couldn't assuage her discomfort. The only function I could see in all this was to generate money and keep someone in work.

After we had been irradiated and then discharged ourselves we were off to get blood tests. Turkish law dictates that before Ayla and I marry we must be in peak physical condition, like everyone else. This meant blood tests for HIV, hepatitis A and B and syphilis. Rather than allowing us to be tested in our private hospital (who said I was a socialist?), we had to be tested in a state clinic.

The undeniably friendly technician teetered around on cork wedged heels in the on-street laboratory unchanged since, well, ever. No gloves, no swab, no disinfection. If we didn't have HIV, hepatitis and syphilis before we walked in, chances are we'd have it by the time we walked out.

However frustrating, frightening, and life-threatening it all was thank god this wasn't the NHS.
Ooh Matron!