School Doctor

I learned the other day we have a school doctor and I can go there whenever I want. Not that I ever want to go to the doctor . . . but Tolga wanted to take me to the hospital, which I thought was a little dramatic, so I agreed to go to the school doctor.

I knocked on the office door not sure whether the label said doctor or not, and not sure what the protocol was for showing up. The nurse and doctor where in the front room looking at a sheet of honey comb that someone had just brought as a gift for him from a nearby village. They welcomed me and shooed me into the second office to sit and have a chat. The doctor informed me, in English, that he has been a doctor for 25 years and doesn't perscribe antibiotics for every ailment. He must have treated many foreigners because he definitely addressed my foremost concerns. I told the doctor I had two problems. My eyelid was still infected, and my stomach was not happy.

He saw my eye right away when I took off my glasses and looked at it with his eye scope. He told me, "It is not bad. I have seen this many times and yours is not bad. It's not on the eye. I give you cream. You put on the door of your eye in the morning and the night."
"I've been using a cream"
"Yes, but I give you better cream. The eye will take the cream inside and clean the spot. If not, in one week, you must see an eye doctor and maybe they will do a small surgery."
"Surgery?!"
"Yes, but very small. Not bad. Just to clean the veins."
"Okay. My second problem is my stomach. It started hurting very bad on Thursday and . . ."
"Ah, yes." And he pulls out his handy-dandy scope and looks at my throat. "Ah yes. It's not bad. Many teachers tell me this in the beginning."
"Not my throat, my stomach."
"Oh! Sorry."

He then proceeded to prescribe me medicines that he insisted an infant could take, and a cream for my eye before he, the secretary and the pharmacist wished me a "Gec mic olsun" a phrase that sounds like "get Mitch Olson" but is a form of well wishing when one is sick or something bad has happened. It's an encouragement that "things will be better now."