Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Medical Exams

The bureaucracy is far from over. Rowan and I now have two months in which to complete our residency. It's a little disheartening since we just got done with the mad dash to get the visas and dependant status. Now we basically have to start all over again. We have decided to go ahead and hire someone to walk us through the process. He makes all the arrangements, picks us up and takes us where we need to go, does all the translation and generally makes things a whole lot easier. This service does not come cheap, but I do think it's well worth it. The guy we hired works for Jesse's company a lot and others have used him so we know he is trustworthy.

Yesturday he picked us up and took us to the place where they do the medical exams. This was by far the shabbiest building I have seen in Kuwait. It was a government building, so it made perfect sense! Our guy dropped us off, told us to take a seat and that he had to run to the Immigration office and he would be back. What he didn't tell me was that he had to do the immagration thing before we could proceed with the medical exams. So Rowan and I sat there for over an hour not having any clue what was going on. People came and went and no one waited as long as we did. He finally came back and we were able to proceed.

The medical exam only consisted of drawing some blood and a chest x-ray. They wanted to know if Rowan had been vaccinated for TB, but they called it something else. I just kept saying "what" over and over until they finally took off his shirt and looked for the impression that the shot leaves. There was no impression so they had to do the skin test. He was not amused. They didn't take his blood and I'm worried that they will do that when he goes back to get the skin test read. I don't know if I'll be able to hold him down.

They took my blood and then ushered me to a changing room where the lady said "take everything off". She didn't give me a gown to wear or anything. I went in the dressing room and saw a gown hanging there, to my relief. I started to take everything off and someone yells, "not your trousers!" Yes, I do realize that you don't have to take off your pants for a chest x-ray, I was just flustered by the lack of gown, and she did say to take everything off. I put my pants back on the got the gown on. I then realized that those coming back from the x-ray room were changing back into their clothes and hanging the gowns on hooks in the dressing room. Guess where I got my gown? Yes, from a hook. At that point, I didn't really care that I was wearing a used gown, I just wanted to get it over with.

At the end of the day, it all worked out just fine and our medical exams are over. At least the rest is just sitting in boring offices, no needles involved.

No comments: