Public Health

Well there has been so much talk and controversy about public medicine; I did a little research here in Barcelona. Saturday night I had another bowel obstruction, the worse I have ever had. I know all of you who know my history are saying I should never have traveled with this existing risk. Probably a wise thought, but I am not always wise and seldom err on the side of caution. Also, if I hadn’t done this, I would not have had the experience of having surgery in a public hospital in Spain. Public hospitals in a country that has a public health system are not what we think of when we think of hospitals for the poor.

We had to call an ambulance because I could not move. The paramedics took my vitals and then took me to the ambulance. Nothing in Spain is large enough for a gurney so the ambulance guys held me up and more or less carried me to the elevator and then the ambulance where I thought I would get to lie down. But no, they strapped me into the seat facing backwards as we rushed thought the streets of Barcelona with things, including me sliding from side to side. Many times the ambulance had to stop because the streets are just not wide enough for the cars to pull over and there is no such thing as a shoulder on the roads. Leea can explain the ride from the front seat, which was different and very exciting.

However, we got to the hospital and they processed me and then sat me in a chair to wait with about 50 other people. At this point my lovely daughter went into her bull dog routine, got the interpreter, told them this was not acceptable that I could die from this problem and if they could treat me we needed to go to a private hospital. The interpreter called the private hospital and was about to call the taxi when the public hospital found a bed for me. So we decided to stay there and see what the medical care was like.

I’ve had a lot of experience with bowel obstructions so I was able to determine that what they were doing was all standard medical protocol. So after x-rays, contrast CT scans and several hours of waiting to see if this thing would unblock, when the surgeon said they need to do surgery, I said, “ok.”

Now if you are a citizen of the European Union all this is free, but if you are not, you have to pay for it. And then I have to submit it to my insurance company when I get home. So we had to put up a deposit on my credit cards and are waiting to see if I owe any more. If so I may have to wash bed pans to pay the bill.

But the medical care has been excellent so far, as good, if not better than I receive at Saddleback or Mission. There is gigantic language barrier because a lot of the hospital employees don’t speak Spanish (which I can speak only a little) they speak Catalan which is a mixture of Spanish, Portuguese and French. Yikes!! But despite the language problem it has still gone relatively smoothly. Now maybe for a heart transplant it may be different, I don’t know. But so far it seems good. And I would definitely think we should get this going in the US as soon as possible.

I mentioned to Leea that this was an extreme measure to get my friends to write to me even thoough they are working hard, taking care of kids and doing their busy lives. But it didn’t work. A couple of people wrote. Maybe this is a case of crying “medical emergency” too often. I will have to think of a new way to get attention.