Dr. Brueck's 8th Siberian Diary Day

This is the 8th daily entry in Dr. Brueck's diary from his medical mssion to Siberia.

July 4^th 2008

Today is Mitah’s birthday and he is 12 years old, we all blew up balloons and wrote up a nice little birthday wish on it and strung it up in the living room on a string.

After breakfast we had our morning prayer, bible reading, sung a few songs and we were off to the village of Butrakhty. As we were going to the village we had a road block and had to wait for several cows to cross.

What is interesting is that there are no fences for any of the animals; they are free to roam wherever they want, whenever they want. Not only are the cows free to roam but the pigs, ducks, goats, cats, dogs and yes even the badgers are allowed to roam.

We saw many people that day and it seems that arthritis, high blood pressure, heart disease and alcoholism are at the top of the list. I got somewhat frustrated since we only had a handful of medications to hand out to people. The medicines we had were over the counter since I had not received a license I had to be careful that I didn’t practice medicine.

In fact the FSB, which used to be the KGB, came by while we were in Butrakhty to make sure we weren’t doing anything “illegal”. The health care system in Russia is nothing like the states. Several times today the people couldn’t afford to buy the medicine so they go without. It is not a socialized system and they do not receive free health care. There are definitely many cracks in the healthcare system.

Even some of our Russian translators don’t know much about the system.Maybe we can send in Michael Moore so he can reform the system. I am sure he would give the Russian health care system a high rating, after all Michael Moore is the guru when it comes to health care systems and he knows what is best.

We finished around 6 o’clock and went back to Wolfgang's and Judit's home for dinner. While dinner was being made some of us hit a volleyball in the backyard that Mitah had gotten for his birthday. After dinner we were all going to sit down, settle in and watch a movie in Russian about a missionary.

Needless to say it did not seem like an inviting opportunity for the Bru. The movie would start around 9:30 which was on my time-table a little late. So I quietly excused myself and when I excused myself Grisha decided he would go as well so the two of us went to the store in town and bought a bottle of Coca-cola light.

We were going to go back and celebrate our new found treasure. It was like a glass of fine wine and a great way to end a very tiring day.

Once again I was going to be banished to the sofa to begin my sojourn to the wee hours of the morning.

Entry nine will be presented tomorrow.