Man's best friend

The last few weeks have been among the most frustrating, worrying and downright stressful of my adult life and I don't think that here is the place to go into details. To cut a very long and beaureacratic story short, we have had something of a battle with the Polish medical services and their incompetent, intelligence-free staff and institutions.

This story, however, concerns the return leg of a trip one Sunday after we had travelled down to find out exactly where the Institute of Genetic Medicine was in readiness for a visit the following morning, at 8am. A trip we had to get up at 6am to make and which turned out to be the straw that broke the camel's back. This institute / hospital is in a leafy suburb, not far from the palace at Wilanów, but not that easy to get to. We decided to do a reccy a day early so that we knew where we were in our sleepy stumblings the next day. Unchallenged by security, we were allowed to enter and ask directions from the woman on the desk who was dressed as if for a shift cleaning toilets which, should I ever get chance, will be her job for the remainder of her sad and pointless life, along with several doctors who shall be named for incompetence and general unhelpfulness just as soon as I get their names from Agnieszka.

Position of the required office located, we came back outside and crossed over a crumbling and rusty footbridge to sit in the weak winter sun, eating homemade sandwiches and speculating which bus to get. The first to come was no good. The second while we were still eating our sandwiches and couldn't be bothered to get up. So it was that we got the 519 back to the centre of Warsaw. We managed to get a seat fairly near the back and settled down for the ride into town.

On the seat opposite a woman was holding a small dog, a Yorkshire terrier or other such rug rat and on the back seat a middle-aged man had a small white dog on a lead. About five minutes after we got on, the man stood up and started to talk to the woman, his little mongrel watching patiently from the doorway of the bus. The man was obviously comparing dogs as he asked a few questions and stroked the little terrier. His dog continued to stand patiently by the door, waiting. The man said something to it and it wagged its tail.

"Are we getting off?" he said. The dog wagged its tail a little harder.

"Are we getting off?" The man bent down and ruffled the dog's fur.

"Are we going for a walk?" The little white dog's tail was wagging now and then, with a final "Are we getting off?" he let out a short, sharp bark that echoed round the bus and caused a few passengers to look round.

It must have been the bark that did it. Got the poor little dog so excited he couldn't hold it in, and let go with a small but deadly doggy guff. A few seconds after he barked, an invisible cloud enveloped us, causing our eyes to water and the sensitive hairs in our noses to curl up or wilt. The smell was phenomenal. There are military men in the world who would pay a fortune for this kind of biological weapon. If the driver had opened the doors, the bus would have emptied in seconds. But we were sat at lights and had to wait until they turned green - rather like many of the passengers - and the bus crossed the junction and pulled up at the stop. The doors opened, the man and his mobile methane machine got off - and I'm sure I saw, through my tear-filled eyes, the dog smirk. The welcome freshness of Sunday afternoon traffic fumes helped to slowly dispel the reeking poochy pong. You could actually hear sighs of relief as people were able to breathe again. Eyes were dried, noses re-emerged from behind hands, scarves and hoods.

It was the first time we'd laughed in what seems like weeks. All we want to do is check that this baby is healthy and at every step we have met with a wall of paperwork, of petty and officious pricks who think it is their duty to stall, to confuse, to give out false information or hope. I'm fairly sure that this paper trail has contributed to the fact that several major hospitals here in Poland are on the verge of bankruptcy, and it isn't helped by doctors who play God or are arrested for taking bribes to perform surgery, or others sit in offices so full of "presents" (Cognac, watches, pens...) there's hardly any room for themselves and the basic care that should be provided to so many is an after-thought, if it's thought about at all.