Since medical school (or maybe longer?) I've known that I wanted to return to Russia as a doctor and use my training and my language skills to give back to the people there. I expected that I would complete my medical training and find a way to go back once I was in practice. Coincidentally, though, the chair of pediatric cardiology at Mayo, Frank Cetta, has been going to Russia each year with a group called Heart to Heart (http://www.heart-2-heart.org/). For the past 20 years, this group has been travelling to different regions in Russia and training nurses, pediatric cardiologists and pediatric cardiac surgeons to care for children with congenital heart defects. For the past 2 years or so I've been pestering Dr. Cetta to bring me along on his next trip. Given the nature of the trips, though, taking along a trainee like me usually isn't feasible. But this year a family emergency prevented one of the team members from making the trip, and about 3 weeks before they were scheduled to go, Dr. Cetta informed me that they had a spot available. I was thrilled and quickly took to applying for a new passport, since mine had expired a year before.
Fortunately, I got the passport and a Russian visa just in time.
We left for Russia on April 14. Dr. Cetta and I were scheduled to fly from Rochester to Chicago to Moscow. The rest of our team was coming from different parts of the country (Chicago, Milwaukee, Sacramento, Atlanta, Philadelphia). Two team members--Maryanne from Milwaukee and Lynn from Chicago would be on the same flight to Moscow.
The trip out had a bit of an "Amazing Race" feel to it right from the start, as our Rochester to Chicago flight was cancelled. So we booked it out of town in a taxi, trying to catch the Minneapolis to Chicago flight that was leaving in about 2 hours (its a 1:15 drive from Rochester to Minneapolis). We caught the flight with literally 2 minutes to spare, but had no guarantee that our luggage would make it on the plane. This was concerning, since our Chicago to Moscow flight was the last of the day. If our luggage missed that flight, it would inevitably miss the Moscow to Tomsk flight the following day. And, then, who knows if we would see it again?
In Chicago we were quoted an 80% chance of our luggage making it on our Moscow flight, which was not as reassuring as it might sound.
The Chicago to Moscow flight was an 11 hour affair overnight. The plane was not full, so I had a whole row to myself at first. I didn't lay claim to it quickly enough (by stretching out and taking a nap), so the end seat on the row became a popular spot for people looking for a little room. I must have woken up 2 or 3 times to find a different person sitting there each time.
We flew into the Domodedovo airport south of Moscow. It is either a new or newly renovated airport, since it was not like anything I had seen in Russia when I was there 13 years before. Definitely euro-chic--high end shops and fancy restaurants and stuff. There was even a Sbarro Pizza (albeit quite russified), which we took advantage of on our return trip. More important to me though, was the good news that our luggage had made the connection in Chicago.
We were met in Moscow by our Tomsk Heart to Heart liason, Irma. We had an 11-hour layover and at our request, Irma had arranged for a car to take us into town. We dropped our luggage off at a secure holding facility at the airport and headed out.
The air in Moscow smelled like cigarette smoke, exhaust fumes and dirt, bringing back fond memories of my time there. It took us about 45 minutes to get to downtown, which seemed a lot bigger and much more modern than I remember it. I had forgotten how incredibly huge Moscow is (10 million people). We had tickets to the Armory in the Kremlin where a tour guide led us through a brief history of the Russian czars, their thrones and clothing. After that we headed toward Red Square to see St. Basil's Cathetral and Lenin's mosoleum, but it was closed to the public due to a military rehearsal for the big upcoming May 9th celebration (Victory in Europe Day--the biggest holiday in Russia). Here are a couple pictures taken from outside Red Square:
The walls of the Kremlin...
The northwest end of Red Square. In the foreground is the State Historical Museum. In the background is the Kremlin...
This is looking from northwest to southeast. In the foreground on the right is the State Historical Museum again with St. Basil's Cathedral in the distance...
This is a picture of the Temple of Christ the Savior. It was originally destroyed by Stalin to make room for a huge public swimming pool. When I returned from Moscow in 1996, it was being reconstructed...
Next we visited a little cafe in one of the side streets of downtown, where I had some very expensive Fanta and Russian blini (pancakes). We took the subway to the Pushkin railway station where we caught and express train back to the airport.
Our flight left at about 10 pm and flew 4 hours to Tomsk, arriving at 6 am local time. Mid-flight we were served a meal of meat and pasta and some nasty spinach something-or-other. Definitely not my idea of a good midnight snack.
In Tomsk, we were met by a large cohort of the Tomsk medical team, who delivered us to our hotel, Hotel Oktyabrskaya ("October"). The hotel was surprisingly upscale, and by the next day I had even discovered that they had high-speed internet! In Toms, Russia! That was just amazing to me. My experience with international communication in Russia consisted of snail mail that would take 2 weeks to get to the US from Moscow. How on earth did they go from that to getting high-speed internet in the middle of Siberia? In any event, here's a picture of my hotel room:
This is most of our group in the restaurant off of the hotel lobby. They fed us some pretty darn good Russian food throughout our stay in Tomsk. Clockwise starting with me (this is mostly so I can remind myself of everyone's names in a year or two): Me, Talia (phlebotomist), Laura (anesthesiologist), Lynn (nurse), Dr. Cetta (cardiologist--I'm still not at a point where I can call him Frank, since he's my boss), Brenda (ICU nurse), Janet (intensivist), Gale (OR nurse), Maryanne (coordinator/administrator), Gary (surgeon).
There was a new restaurant not far from our hotel, called Southern Fried Chicken ("SFC"). We figured we'd check it out, and we were pleasantly surprised! The chicken was pretty good, although the portions were small. Most of the patrons looked like they were about 15 years old, so we felt a bit out of place. I assumed my role as Orderer of the Food. A few days later some of the ladies in our group ventured back to SFC by themselves. I got a call from them asking if I could speak with the cashier. 20 minutes after ordering they still only had about 1/3 of their food. The cashier, it turns out didn't think there was a problem and wondered what this group of foreigners was upset about. We all got a good laugh out of that.
Tomsk is a very nice city, but I realize that I am biased towards cold, dreary Russian towns. Here is a picture of me at the top of the main hill in town. Our hotel is to the right of the church in the background, about halfway between the church and the right border of the photo. A close up of the church and the hotel follows.
This is a picture I took from one of the upper floor balconies in our hotel. We had visited the Russian orthodox church in the distance (shown close-up in the subsequent picture).
This church was beautiful. We happened to visit right during a series of Easter ceremonies, which we were able to observe. This church had a large bell in it's courtyard, which was made in Voronezh, a city I had lived in 14 years ago as a misisonary.
Tomsk is called the "derevyany" or "wooden" city. It got this nickname because many of the older buildings are all or partially wooden. This makes for some really unique Siberian architecture as shown in the following two pictures. The first building is now the Tomsk Fine Arts Center.
This, again is the church by our hotel. I must have taken about 30 pictures of it, trying to get it in the right light. It had a pink-peach color, which looked incredible at night, unfortunately, my night shots turned out a bit grainy, so this picture at dusk will have to do.
Every major city in Russia has a Lenin Square. Such is the case for Tomsk (below). A statue of Lenin himself is pointing the urban proletariat in the direction of progress, community, and Southern Fried Chicken.
Once upon a time, Anton Chekhov, Russia's most famous playwright, stayed in Tomsk. He was none too taken by the town and wrote a scathing report about his experience there. Among other criticisms, he said it was rainy, muddy, full of drunks and the women were ugly. In his "honor", the city created this monument, which is intended as a characature of Chekhov. His feet are big and he is so tall, representing the perspective of a drunk lying on the street looking up at him.
The locals say that it is good luck to rub his nose. And I'm not one to pass on perpetuating a good superstition...
The Tomsk team were very gracious hosts, early during our trip, our hosts took us out to "nature" (i.e. the countryside) for a little R&R. We had a wonderful kebab feast with plenty of toasts and words of appreciation. While I abstained from the vodka, I took part in the friendly revelry of the event.
After the feast, a number of people went to the banya--a unique Russian experience involving sweating in a scalding hot steam room while someone whips you with tree branches, then jumping into a frigid pool. You repeat this process until you feel clean, or you are so drunk that you can't stand up. Having had the banya experience before (non-alcoholic, of course), I stayed out with the other abstainers and played Russian billiards.
The bulk of our stay, of course, was spent at the Tomsk Cardiology Centre. Our days were filled with seeing numerous patients with various congenital heart defects, performing echocardiograms (heart ultrasound), heart catheterizations, operations and giving lectures.
This is the conference room where we met frequently throughout the day to discuss patients and give lectures. It was always well attended by nurses, cardiologists, surgeons, etc. They really had a hunger to learn more western medicine, and we really appreciated their enthusiasm.
I spent the bulk of my time in the cardiac catheterization lab. Seeing as how this is what I want to do career-wise, I really enjoyed it. I worked closely with Viktor, the Tomsk physician who does their catheterizations. We developed a very good rapport, despite our discrepant sizes.
This is a picture through the x-ray proof window. Dr. Raff (the US surgeon) and Dr. Cetta are discussing the pictures we are taking with Evgeny (in the white coat, hunched over Dr. Cetta). Again, you can see by the sheer number of people watching, how excited they were to have us there and how they wanted to learn as much as they could.
I like this picture, because it makes me look smarter than I really am. What I'm probably really saying is, "Wait, I thought left is THAT way!"
I was really impressed with the level of technology that they had in Tomsk. I understand that they had gotten some new equipment since Heart to Heart's last visit a year earlier.
My Russian speaking skills came back pretty well, but I still found myself making grammatical mistakes regularly. I was able to pick up a great deal of medical lingo, though. This came in handy, since I was the only medical person who was biligual. We had local university students who translated for us, and they were very good. One of my unofficial roles was to keep track of the interpretation and provide feedback and recommendations for improvement. I developed a healthy, symbiotic relationship with the interpreters--they taught me Russian words or phrases and I clarified English/American colloquiallisms and help explain medical terminology and concepts. I certainly learned a lot from that interaction. Here I am with two of the interpreters I probably worked with the most, Sergei and Irina:
At the end of our trip, we had a more formal farewell dinner with some fine dining, dancing, awards, and, yes, more toasts. It was a lot of fun. I tried caviar for the first time ever and took some hilarious video of some crazy Russian dancing (Or is it "crazy Russians dancing"? I'll let you decide):
This is a picture of me, Dr. Cetta (to my left), Viktor (to my right) and the rest of the cath lab crew. At first, I didn't recognize most of them without their hats and masks.
The evening's activities culminated in a mock awards ceremony. The Tomsk interpreters had thought up some clever awards for each of the members of the American team. I was in the running for the Best Russian Linguist against some pretty tough competition. Here's a video of the announcement of the winner and [SPOILER ALERT!] my acceptance speech:
This is the final picture of our big group at the end of the party, prior to our departure the next morning. I'm the one in the back that is a tiny bit taller than all the others:
It was really an incredible experience for me. I am very fortunate to have been able to go at this stage in my training. There is already some talk about next year's trip, and it sounds like I am being included in that discussion. My hope is that this will become a yearly opportunity for me throughout my career.
