UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE & THE FAIRNESS DOCTRINE IN GDANSK

On this day – hair and all -- I was introduced to Pan Walesa, he bowed, kissed my hand, and we exchanged the Polish greeting. He said some words to me in Polish, and I said some pleasantries back in English. Bob Fielding was translating, so it was good to greet him again also.

We all sat down, and then the Polish began to fly. I could not understand anything they said, but later on a subsequent trip, I would learn that they were planning Walesa’s campaign strategy for President. I would be a part of this, but was blissfully unaware of it at this time.

The meeting was short, and immediately thereafter, Andrjez escorted me out of headquarters and over to a nearby hospital (we walked everywhere in Gdansk). There, he introduced me to the head thoracic surgeon (Whose name I could not pronounce, and so cannot remember -- so I'll call him Dr. Heart). Dr. Heart could speak English enough for me to understand most of what he was telling me, and I spoke enough Medical to understand what he was showing me, and what his needs were. I took copious notes as I observed the hospital had only 1 thoracic kit, and that if the clamps, etc. broke, they would be out of business. With all the smoking going on in Poland, heart and lung surgeries were in high demand, and their antique equipment could hardly keep up.

Dr. Heart lamented for an MRI, portable X-ray machine, etc. He was gracious and magnanimous. I observed that he looked as poor as the patients he treated, which reminded me that in communist countries, EVERYONE was equal. Everything had to be FAIR, which meant that Medical Doctors were not entitled to any more pay than the lump that sat in the gift shop at the Hell hotel waiting for you to beg her to take your money for a piece of Amber. Archeologists, teachers, professors, janitors, clerks and cashiers were all paid roughly the same. Now politicians and communist rulers fared much better, because they were in charge of making sure everything outside their own world was FAIR!

Dr. Heart took me to a second near-by hospital, and looked at the same scarcity as the last. I began to ask him questions about how people paid for healthcare, how it was delivered, and to what extent it was available to the people. As the Dr. explained, all healthcare cost the same for everyone (except “special” people how shall remain communist leaders) – too expensive; there were not enough doctors to go around (where was the incentive to go through all the schooling and training?) – but this was fair because it inconvenienced everyone; and most doctors worked in the hospital because they weren’t allowed to own property (wouldn't be fair), and so office space was difficult to come by.

It was here that I began to formulate my idea that the Solidarity Unions might hold the answer to improved healthcare for the people of Poland. The Union was still comprised of a lot of little unions all over the nation, and was still 10 million-members strong. The members paid union dues, and portions of those dues were already allocated to the Solidarity Fund, which was in place to help find employment for out-of-work or formerly black-listed workers. Now that Solidarity was legal, why couldn’t some of that money be diverted towards creating a healthcare fund – or a managed healthcare system that could reach more people, without the expense of expansion?

My thoughts were interrupted when Dr. Heart invited me over to his home to have dinner with his family. I realized as he spoke that I had not had anything to eat all day long, so dinner sounded great! I wouldn’t have to meet with Martha and her friends until later, so I cheerfully accepted.

WOMEN IN PRISON

Inside Solidarity Headquarters just outside the Gdansk (formerly Lenin) shipyard, I walked upstairs to Andrjez’s office to see if he had made it in yet. Julian Skelnik was there, and we spoke for a few minutes. Then Andrjez came running down the hall with a big old smile on his face. He laughed when he saw me (I did look ridiculous). I asked him if he had seen my hairbrush in my room back in Warsaw. He laughed and said he did. It was big fun for him, but I had to go with him now, looking like I did.

I shouldn’t have worried, when on a later trip I met one of the most prominent women of Solidarity, Alina Pienkowska (known for rallying the 1980 strikers and being a leader in the Solidarity Movement) – her hair frizzed out around her head as wide as it was long, and no one held it against her. But another story Joanna told me about herself and Alina was the night that the communist arrested all the Solidarity leaders after they had attended an important meeting and dinner. Joanna and Alina were rounded up by the Zomo, along with Grazina Kuron (married to Jacek Kuron iwho s considered a founding father of the Solidarity Movement as head of the Intelligentsia – which gave credibility and importance to the movement), and many other women.

Joanna always laughed about that night because when the Zomo knocked on her door, they told her that Poland had been an invaded. She asked them who had invaded Poland, and they couldn't give her a straight answer, because it was the Poles themselves -- General Jaruzelski -- who had declared Martial Law, and had invaded his own (unarmed) citizens!

The story Joanna told about herself is that after she had spent a great deal of time in prison, without the luxury of being able to wash her hair all that time, she spent every day of the rest of her life in Poland worrying about if her hair was washed just in case she was arrested again (and she was – many times). Women worry about things like this. It’s awful to have dirty hair while your stuck in a hell-hole. I just had messy hair – but we think of these stupid things at the most bizarre times.

The story about Alina is fairly humorous. On that same night, the Zomo rounded up all the women and threw them in a “paddy” wagon and drove around for hours to confuse the women as to where they were exactly. Since they had all eaten quite a lot at the dinner, they were beginning to feel the pressure to relieve themselves. So Alina asked the guard if they could please go to the bathroom. The guard mostly just ignored her request – but she became more and more insistent. Finally the wagon pulled over at the edge of a forest, and the guards told them they could go over to the field and remedy their discomfort.

But Alina thought about it, and remembering Katyn Forest (where the Russians executed about 22,000 Polish officers, policemen and civilians), decided that she did not want to die in such an undignified manner, while squatting to pee.

The story about Grazina was heart-wrenchingly heroic. Once, while Grazina was in prison, she acquired a virulent form of Tuberculosis. The communist decided to use this to their advantage. They needed to get her husband, Jacek Kuron out of the country in order to utterly defeat Solidarity, so they made her an offer: they offered to send her to a sanitarium in either Sweden or France to recover, if she would take her husband with her.

Grazina was not stupid. She knew what the dull-witted commies were up to. She knew that with her husband out of Poland, Solidarity would fail. So she stalled in answering their offer in order to buy enough time to get a message to her husband that the commies would be coming to him to tell him that she had TB, and that her only hope was to leave the country, and he should go with her. Her message to him was that it was just another communist lie; she was not ill; and they were using her to get him out of the country; and he should not, under any circumstances, fall for it.

Sure enough, when Grazina refused their offer they went to Jacek and told him that her only hope to live was for him to take her out of the country for treatment. Armed with Grazina’s assurances, he also refused. Grazina died a few months later, to Jacek’s great sorrow. But he knew what she had done, and that she had given her life for the cause of her country.

ANOTHER FORREST GUMP WEEK

I had been on the lots of Columbia and Warner Bros. because my older brother was an Editor in Hollywood. He had done the “Trailers” (coming attractions) for “Jaws,” “Gandhi,” “Superman,” “Bird on a Wire,” “ The Exorcist,” “Howard the Duck,” and hundreds more. I had visited him on these lots on several occasions. I had also been recruited as an “Extra” in “Ordinary Hero,” “Deliberate Stranger,” and in local films and commercials. So going to the studios in Warsaw was strictly a fact-finding mission for me.

True to Polish form, the staff was there to meet me, show me around, and provide me with all the information Mr. Norris had required. I also gathered information regarding studios in Krakow (by the Carpathian Mountains), and the film festival in Gdansk.

Later, when I had returned home, I was able to watch some of the movies made in Poland as Solidarity emerged, such as “Man of Iron.” They were all in Polish, but the style of film was very American-like: not Italian-artsy, or French-weird, or British-stiff; but more like American film than any other foreign films I had ever seen.

I left on the afternoon Express train to Gdansk, and arrived fairly late that night. I was asked by the clerk at the “Hell” hotel why a British Subject had an American passport. I laughed, because I knew exactly why he was asking this. I had been making a concerted effort to pronounce my English with deliberate articulation and enunciation so that the regular slur of American English would not interfere with the Poles’ ability to understand the words “coming out of my mouth” (to quote a movie phrase). I explained – with an American accent – that I spoke the way I did, because I was sure that no one would be able to understand my American English because it was so rapid, and so inarticulate. My point was made, and he thanked me for my consideration.

I fell asleep fast, because my appointment in the morning was down the street at Solidarity headquarters where I was to meet with Lech Walesa. I woke up, drew a bath, and went to brush my hair up into a pony-tail so it wouldn’t get wet, when I discovered to my horror that I forgot to bring my hairbrush. I had left it in my hotel room in Warsaw! I was furious with myself. My hair hung down to my waist in very large natural curls, which is just great when it’s brushed – but I had been sleeping on it in the damp air, and it now had additional bends in it. Aggghhhh!!!!

I quickly got on the phone to the Concierge, and learned there were no “extra” hairbrushes in the hotel -- not even in the gift shop -- (looked like the free markets had a ways to go). They would be glad to call me a cab so I could drive around the streets of Gdansk at dawn to try and find a shop or kiosk that sold them. OK – I had a couple of hours before my appointment, so I hurried and got dressed and dashed downstairs to the waiting cab.

Of course, the cabbie only spoke as much English as I spoke Polish, so it was very difficult to tell him what I needed. He finally understood my very poor charade (I always loose at that game), so he drove me to all the nearby stores (2 to be exact – that’s all there were), and either they were not open, or they did not sell hairbrushes. So we tried beauty salons, but all they wanted to do there was CUT my hair – and although I had to agree that it probably needed a trim, I just didn’t have the time. So back I went to the hotel – downtrodden – with even messier hair than I had started with, because the wind off the Baltic Seas was howling.

I went back up to my room to gather all the stuff I’d need for the entire day. The plan was that after I met with Walesa, I was to go with a Medical Doctor – Thoracic Surgeon – to tour the health facilities and equipment they were dealing with there in Gdansk. I opened the closet, and there sat a LINT brush. Aha! I could “brush” my hair with a LINT-brush. I was saved, except that my hair is so thick, that I break regular brushes in it – and so the lint-brush was really only good for smoothing down the outer-layer of my “do.”

I “molded” my hair into a pony-tail on the top and off to one side of my head (my heavy hair gives me a headache when it’s on the center of my head), and smoothed the outer layer with this lint-brush, and then consoled myself that it was so windy outside that it just didn’t matter what I did with it. Brush, or no brush, I’d still look like a crazy woman. I encouraged myself by saying that I looked “trendy,” (what a lie).

Before I left, I checked to see if Martha had left a message. She had. She would be traveling back to Gdansk from Krakow, and she and her new-found friends, Piotr and Pino (artists in Gdansk) would be meeting us both for dinner at 7:00P – I had something fun to look forward to!