First hospital visit

Today we went to the hospital. E had been last week, but today was my first visit as the expecting father. The Italian system, I suspect anyone reading this will become woefully familiar with Italian bureaucracy as well as other nuggets of living in Italy, is designed with one specific purpose; put as many checks in the system as possible. As foreigners, stranieri, living in Italy, we must jump through many a hoop. The first is to obtain a work permit; for me. This takes about 5 months, once you submit all the paperwork. You, and you spouse if you are lucky enough to have one, must provide copies of; your marriage certificate (in both its original language and translated and apostilled in Italian), your University diploma (if you have one), copies of every page of your passport, tax returns for the last couple of years, bank statements, letter of employment and invitation to work in Italy as well as an explanation of what job you will be filling here and why (ostensibly) you 'your foreigner' aren't taking the job of a perfectly capable Italian. Luckily my company, being one of the best, takes care of all the paperwork. I just needed to gather the details. Most were easy, but my father ended up blowing up a wallet-sized copy of my diploma in order to make it scannable and emailable. Thank you very much GT Alumni Association.

5 months later, whammo, you get a permit. As I was already working in Italy, we had to travel back to Boston to go to the Italian Consulate (on the south side of Boston Common). When we went you could only drop Visa applications off on Mon, Wed and Fri; and then only before noon. I arrived at 6, talked to the security guard and established myself as 'the line.' E was back at the hotel getting up leisurely (I was playing the part of the good husband), so being unabashedly early I bounced over to Starbucks, caffeined up and returned to jam out to my mp3 player and read; resuming my solo act as 'the line.' Other, less anal people, started to stroll up around 8 (I don't think the office opened 'til 8:30am or so). E had joined me sometime in the interim and we made small talk with our line mates, in Italian and English. When the doors opened we went directly to the advised floor and walked right up to the office. Someone, inexplicably, had beat me to the office and when I told him there was a line he said "I didn't see it." I said "Look, dude, I've been here since 6:30am, I was 'the line', you couldn't have missed us." He feined embarrassment and bopped back 5 or 6 spots. Our paperwork was in order and 1 week later we came to pick up our Visas. There was some bull shit about the Milan Labor Minister's fax number being wrong and the Consulate couldn't contact them so I spent an hour calling the Milan office from the Boston Common parking garage and other various communications bunkers to have MY office locate the right number, because, you know, the Italian Consulate cannot possibly be depended on to get the number.

We returned to Italy, Visas in hand. Next we went to the local police station to apply for our permesso soggiorno, our 'permit of stay'. Many passport photos, one finger printing session (for me, not E. Apparently Europeans don't get subjected to this, but Americans do. Tit, my dear, almost always catches up with tat.) we were legal residents of Italia. So, when we came south, thank God, we only had to get new permessi so the Italian government would know that we had moved. Never mind that this process took 10 months, after, after, we relocated south to complete. The added bonus for this location is we decided to get our local medical cards so we could enjoy the benefits that a social medical system provides. We went down to the old hospital; chose a doctor, a general practicioner, off a list; and bam, we were set.

E had already been to the hospital for some blood work and stuff back in November, so when she wanted to go back to see the Ob/gyn in her 5th week, she just called him and made an appointment. She bypassed the Golden Rule here (there, are several, but....), 'everyone gets a cut'. The Ob/gyn was pleased she was able to conceive, but he advised that she go to our newly chosen general practitioner to establish contact and get a reference. So she went. The woman, our beloved doctor, almost shoo-ed E away. Displeased with having to accommodate a patient 20 minutes before closing time, she was not exhibiting her best bed-side manner. She gave E a script to go back to the ob/gyn she had just come from and then advised that E bring the results of any tests back to her. E countered that the ob/gyn would see them, but Madam insisted that she needed to see them too. She needed the little mark in her book, so she could collect more funds from Il Stato.

So E went back to the ob/gyn, Occhionero, 'black eye' (Oh Jeff Tweedy, "He had a black eye, he was proud of, like some of his friends...."). He had to see roughly 1000 women in his last hour before lunch and no mama fearing Italian misses lunch. He gave her a quick, but thorough exam and prescribed some blood work and urine analysis since, obviously, her situation had changed recently *smirk*. He also prescribed a couple of shots of progesterone, just to be safe, so E and I took those to the 80-something year old woman who had administered some shots to E previously. This woman is all of 4' 8". She looks like Yoda with a hyperdermic, same faint mustache, and a dialectally heavy accent. She had advised E that in order to conceive the man should be on his knees. No mention of where/how the woman should be. When I met her I just prayed she wouldn't ask me 'come avete fatto?' She was quick and sure with goods. Spry, despite her age. She congratulated us and sent us on our way. That little adventure was all Friday.

Today, the hospital.

We park at 7:30am, nice and early. We go straight to the Analisi waiting room, E with urine in hand...turn of phrase. We draw number 241. A good number, prime, maybe. I am plowing through 'The Mapmakers', E has relaunched our mutual obsession with Irving, sporting, 'A Widow for a Year'. We sit down, take off our jackets, and partake in one of the great Italian pastimes; waiting. The analisi office opens at 8am, but no one seems particularly antsy. One of my little mental games is to see if any Italians actually take off their jackets indoors. Its often a low-scoring affair. It's at least 80 degrees in the waiting room. I have shed my North Face shell and my fleece vest. I'm comfortable in my cotton sweater and khakis, I mean, I still have to go to work after this. E has likewise shed her shell and fleece and is surprisingly warm in just a jean shirt. My count is still on thumb-man. Today's group is adhering well to the norm, no outliers today. All jackets remain on.

I wonder if all social system medical facilities are like this. How depressing. Taking a number like you're at a deli, waiting for someone with a morally superior attitude and defunct mental chronometer to dazzle you with their wisdom and delight you with their wit. Mysteriously, the number count for today starts at 230, at 8:10am. Radar Topography must wait while I hold E's stuff when her number gets called. She is informed that despite her waiting and her script, she still must go to the sign-in office to get her autorizazione. Damn, more deli lines. 241, the plucky number, can no longer help us. We draw another, 278. We huff it back to the sign-in office and take a different number, 826. They're on 810. Not looking good for us. After 10 minutes I go back and check on the analisi. They're up to 250. I take another, 288. Back to E. They're up to 118, but mostly older folks; with cash, and coins, are paying their base fees for their visits. E's getting annoyed and I'm diligently trying to think of how we can avoid coming to this backwater hell hole again. I go back to the analisi, take our 4th number of the day, 306. I go back to E. She's at 825, 826. She gets her autorizazione and we go back to analisi, dizzy, but sitting pretty as they're at 300. I wait outside, she drops off her pee and her blood and we're away. Its only 9 o'clock. We played within the constraints of the system and came out with barely a mark. And everyone got their check marks.