Inpatient Rehabilitation, Elektrenei, Lithuania

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I am sitting in the lobby of a rehabilitation center just outside of Elektrenei, near Kaunas. Viktorija is here working as an apprentice and her mother is here for one week getting physical therapy for her back. Tonight we will stay here, hang out some, but for now I am sitting and writing.
This waiting room is very funny. To me it feels very Russian. The outside of the building is grey brick, similar to many of the apartment buildings I saw in Moscow and to many buildings in Kaunas, including Birute and Juozas’ home.
There is an old couple standing in front of me, waiting for the elevator to arrive. The woman is very close to the door, almost like she is hiding or something. And the man is tensely pressing on the orange elevator button. I wonder if he knows that he only needs to press the button once, or maybe he thinks it will come faster if he holds the button down, or maybe he is just playing it safe. Like those people who don’t believe in God but pray everyday, just in case there is one.
Ah. Now I see that there is a printed piece of paper under the button that must say ‘button is broken. Please hold down until elevator door opens’. I know this from the reaction of the nurse who just got on the elevator, her reaction after reading the sign.
There are two very tiny elevators in this lobby that barely fit two people at one time, and then there is a larger freight elevator used for patients with wheelchairs, and staff. Whenever the freight elevator is needed the receptionist will rush over and ride with the patient to his or her destined floor.
There are nurses walking past in white coats, doctors with their clipboards and notepads (unfortunately nurses and doctors are pretty divided along gender lines), new patients walking in the front door with their spouses, looking confused, not knowing where to go to check in (because the reception office is around the corner, through a door on the left Not visible when you enter).
There are many patients, mostly elderly, ambling around in their sweatpants and slippers, looking even more lost than the recent arrivals. It feels like a time capsule. There is nothing to do, so people are just walking around. It is like a big game of musical chairs, of musical lost patients, a waltz of sorts, where the patients enter and exit the stage and the only constant is the slippers. They are all wearing slippers.
They sound like sandpapers, the slippers, sliding across the floor.
The nurses walk with high heels, that go clop-clop like horse hoofs. Their feet are the loudest because they are here everyday and stopped trying to be quiet in the halls long before. Others are more careful.

Shortly after I wrote this journal entry, the day began to get really interesting. Viktorija came out to check on me in the hall, and finding that I was not doing anything, she said that she would go find something for me to do. I was unsure of what she meant. Then a few minutes later she came back and told me to come with her.
We went down a few halls, up some stairs, and down another hall to an office, where her mother and a few doctors were waiting for us. I am introduced to Petras, a doctor and friend of Zena (Viktorija’s mother). Then Zena asks me to explain my injury to Petras—what?! My injury. Ok.
Essentially they had convinced Petras to sign me up as a patient in the rehabilitation center for the week, claiming that I was recovering from a knee injury (which was true, but the injury was four months ago and I am now fully recovered). He began scribbling on his notepad, writing in numbers and times and instructions. When we had finished, he handed me the sheet of paper. It was a full list of therapies and treatments that I was to receive today.
So off we went, Viktorija and I, to talk to the various nurses and therapists and schedule times for my appointments. It was so funny, weaving through the halls and stairways of this place, feeling like everyone was staring at me the whole time.
In the end, I was given the full spa treatment: mud bath, electrostim therapy, pool physical therapy, sauna treatment, a one-hour massage. It was great. And the best part about it was trying to communicate with everybody with the little Lithuanian I have learned in my time here. I learned later that one of the doctors I met thought I was German, and often would try to communicate to me with the German he knew. He later approached Zena, befuddled that I did not once respond to the things he was saying to me. Of course I am not German, and I don’t speak German, which is why I was not responding.

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Comments

[Margot]

Very
Entertaining! Thanks!