CHRIS ANSTEY had an ironclad rule about hospitals while playing basketball in Russia, yet a sudden emergency left him naked, freezing and strapped to a table while awake as a scalpel approached.
When I put pen to paper to play my third season in Russia in 2004, I had a much greater understanding of what I was signing-up for than the eyes-wide-open version of me two years earlier. I had even come up with a rule book of sorts to get the most out of my time there.
Many of these rules were constantly required: Only drink out of a sealed bottle; never eat the ice; always buy food a week in advance; always carry cash to negotiate your way out of troublesome situations.
But there was one rule that sat on the top of them all from my very first day in Russia: If my family or I ever faced a medical emergency, leave immediately. The reason for Rule No.1 was simple. The medical care and facilities were questionable at best, terrifying at worst.
One doctor clearly saw no issue with asking me, via our female club interpreter, to drop my pants and bend over for a colon examination in the presence of three club officials. He seemed genuinely surprised when I suggested the club stick my contract where the doctor sought to stick his finger if that was how they treated their players.
Fortunately, I had never been in a situation to implement Rule No.1. At least, not until a month into my third Russian season – and second with UNICS Kazan – when it came into play very suddenly and seriously.
During a flight back to Kazan from a Wednesday night European game, I began getting sharp, stabbing pains low down in my stomach. By the time I got into bed that night, I was curled up in the fetal position, unable to straighten out.
I didn’t sleep that night. I called Martin Muursepp, my Estonian friend and teammate who was fluent in Russian and English and asked him to tell our team doctor I didn’t think I could train that morning. All missed practices had to be cleared by the doctor, and passes were very rarely given.
But Martin must have done a good job describing my symptoms because the doctor turned up at my apartment not long after to examine me. The pain was excruciating as he prodded around my abdomen. In the middle of his diagnosis, delivered in fluent Russian, I understood just one word: “hospital”.
I’m 213cm when fully upright, but the pain had me crumpled and I stood about the same height as our 167cm doctor, who now expected me to curl up further in the back seat of his little white Lada.
The pain came and went over the 15-minute drive and felt a little better as we pulled up in front of an old double-storey building, which I could only assume was the hospital.
We found our way to a doctor’s office just inside the tiny side door that served as the main entrance, and I climbed onto the bed. More prodding and more sharp pain followed by another Russian diagnosis of which I understood just one word. This time it was “surgery”.
That was the trigger to execute Rule No.1 and inform our team doctor of my intentions, also with just one word I assumed he would understand: “London”. I was flat out of luck and the Russians were out of English.
It’s fair to say there was a little confusion between our doctor and, I would soon discover, the hospital surgeon. Neither spoke English, and their conversation was getting more animated. They made a phone call, spoke for a while, then handed me the phone.
It was Martin. They had called the team manager and asked him to substitute Martin out of practice for a few minutes so he could translate.
“They say you need surgery,” he told me. “Your appendix is about to burst.”
My reply was succinct. “Tell them I’m getting on the first plane I can to London and having surgery there.”
I handed the phone back to the doctor and waited. He chatted to the surgeon, spoke to Martin again and handed the phone back.
“The surgeon says you cannot travel. Your appendix will likely burst on the plane, and you will die. He says it is OK. He has done this surgery a few times before.”
A few times?!
So, there I was, faced with the choice of dying on an aeroplane executing Rule No.1, or agreeing to have surgery in this decrepit Russian hospital.
I had never been more uncertain of anything in my life.
A nurse arrived and walked me out of the room, down a corridor and to a ward with 20-odd beds, all just centimetres apart. A dozen pairs of eyes were on me as I made my way to a bed in the middle of the ward, all of them watching as the nurse gestured for me to undress, which I did down to my underwear. Playing the worst ever game of charades, the nurse then clearly indicated I was also required to remove my underwear.
Standing naked in the middle of a room full of strangers is not comfortable. When that room is in a rundown hospital and the temperature outside is -10 degrees, it feels way worse.
That exact moment, with me freezing cold and naked, was when our team interpreter – a woman – arrived at the request of the club to offer some help. It was fair to say that horse had already bolted.
Still following mimed instructions, I climbed onto the bed and lay on my back. Awesome. The nurse whipped out a yellow, plastic disposable razor. Clearly unaware of or disinterested in using shaving cream, she leaned over me and began to dry shave my abdomen.
To this day I remain uncertain of the need to shave everywhere from a patient’s sternum to upper-thigh for an appendectomy, but that is exactly what happened in the hospital ward that day. Standing naked in front of a room full of strangers was no longer on top of my newly-formed uncomfortable moments list.
Of course, being naked and dry shaved in front of a room of Russian patients was just the beginning. A second nurse rolled a trolley into the room and directed me onto it. On my back, still naked, but now with small razor cuts all over me, I was wheeled out of the room, into the tiled corridor lined with waiting patients and through a set of wooden swinging doors. Now it was just the nurse and I as we took one more right through an old wooden door and into a small room. The nurse rolled the trolley in the middle of the room and departed.
I looked around and took in my surroundings. There was a light resembling a Dolphin Torch that dimly filled the space above my head. Just inside the door there were two green plastic rubbish bins filled with bloody bandages. Their black lids were on the floor. A wooden bench with two drawers sat against the wall near my feet. This was the operating theatre.
The nurse reappeared with the surgeon I had met earlier. He had clearly forgotten I did not speak Russian and began asking me for my weight. I think I told him 113 kilograms. Armed with everything he apparently needed, things began happening, and my emotional tailspin began.
The surgeon nodded to the nurse, who had somehow located two narrow wooden trolleys and had rolled them to either side of the trolley I was laying on. She attached them perpendicularly to my trolley and placed my arms on them. I was lying on a crucifix as she fastened my arms, chest and legs with leather straps.
The nurse disappeared and returned with an intravenous bag on a stand. She stuck the needle into my wrist, connected me to the hanging bag and set the stand aside. She then dipped a small cloth into a tray of fluid, which I assumed to be disinfectant, and began to prepare me for surgery.
Remembering I was freshly dry-shaved from sternum to thigh and still bleeding from the many nicks and cuts, it started to sting. Through the pain I took some deep breaths and closed my eyes to try to relax.
Not more than a few seconds after I closed my eyes, I heard what I can only describe as the sound you hear when you go into a kitchen and shake the cutlery drawer. I opened my eyes to a vision that, to this day, remains seared in my mind.
The surgeon was bent over my right side in the vicinity of where my appendix should be, his scalpel hovering, ready to cut me open. I started screaming to let him know I was still awake. Between his surgical mask and hat, I could see his eyes widen as he looked me in the eye. Clearly surprised that I was not unconscious, he began yelling abusive instructions at the nurse.
The nurse looked confused as she hurriedly adjusted my IV drip. The surgeon clearly did not understand my next words. “Stop. Let me out of here!” I was no longer scared. I was terrified. I was stuck.
“I’m actually going to die right here,” I thought.
It was a fight to stay awake against the clumsily increased dose of anaesthetic, and against the searing pain of whatever antiseptic had been applied to my entire torso and genitalia. I battled to keep my eyes open to make sure the surgeon knew I was awake. The drugs finally did their job and I fell asleep.
I was winning the moment I opened my eyes after surgery. The fact that I was in pain and alone in a strange room did not even matter. I had survived!
The club owners had made sure I had a private recovery room. My tiny single bed, portable oil heater and outdated decor would become my home for the next week. Given what I had just been through, I figured I could handle that without a problem. Until I received the first of several reminders I was in Russia.
I would learn later there were no antibiotic tablets in Russia. The only way I could receive antibiotics was by injection, and I needed two a day. I would also learn, when the nurse came to check on me, that I now had 20 centimetres of stitching across my abdomen from an operation that would have been performed with keyhole surgery in the Western world. It turned out the surgeon was not, in fact, experienced or nimble with his fingers.
The first night post-surgery was the hardest as the pain lingered. I did not trust the medication they were providing me and wanted to know how I felt without the pain being masked. I said no to the painkillers I was offered at 5pm and tried to relax.
The hospital got quiet. The pain got worse. I looked around for a call button that did not exist. I waited for a nurse to check on me. I kept waiting. It was 8pm before I started calling out for painkillers. It was too much for too long.
It turned out the last round of drugs to be administered to patients was at 5pm each day. Then the hospital staff would go home. One of the first jobs staff members had each morning was to do a round of the beds and remove any patients who had died overnight. Crazy.
I have never been so pleased to see another person as I was when the nurse walked in at 7am the next day and offered me painkillers.
Belatedly invoking Rule No.1, I left hospital the minute I could. One week after staggering into the hospital, I was on a flight to Dallas. I needed to see a surgeon I trusted, someone to check me over fully, to make sure everything was OK. I was relieved to learn that, while the process used was very outdated and the wound far bigger than necessary, the surgeon had done a good enough job.
There were a couple of reasons to go to Dallas rather than Melbourne to get checked. One was that Dallas was about nine hours closer to Kazan by plane. But the main reason was I knew if I flew to Melbourne, I probably would not go back.
Through the mental and physical scars of my week in an old Russian hospital, I was again reminded of just how lucky I was to have been born and raised in Australia, where many things we take for granted are, in fact, luxuries.
I stayed in Dallas for a week to recover before heading back to join my team in Kazan. I got back into training and played my first game back another two weeks later. Life was back to ‘normal’. It was just incredible how crazy ‘normal’ was becoming.
Chris Anstey is a former professional basketball player who played in the NBA, Russia, Spain and domestically in the NBL, as well as at the Olympics for the Australian Boomers. He started his career in 1994 for the Melbourne Tigers and had stints for the Dallas Mavericks and Chicago Bulls. After finishing up his playing career in 2010, he coached the Melbourne Tigers and United from 2012-2014. He won two NBL MVP awards and was the Gaze Medal winner in 2002. He has had a stellar media career since retirement and has a unique insight into the world of basketball both in Australia and overseas.
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