Sunday, November 2, 2008

Getting Sick Here

I have been sick for some months now. Since May, I have been in the hospital twice for a total stay of about 6 weeks. Of all things, I was diagnosed to have TB in my right knee. That's right - TB, as in tuberculosis, in my knee. This is not that usual, but apparently, I'm one of the unusual cases. It took the doctors some time to come to this conclusion; first they thought it was some kind of arthritis, and later some kind of reuma. But finally, after I had to be rushed to the hospital with a very high fever, they were able to take samples of fluid from my knee (it's painful when they did this :-(, and to make it worse, they had to try 4 times before they got something ), they were able to find this out.
For me, finding out that I had TB was both a bad thing and a good thing. The bad thing is that it takes looong to cure TB- up to a year or more of treatment. The good thing is that it was curable; if I had reuma or arthritis, then I would have it for the rest of my life.

I get a lot of medical attention these days, from at least four doctors. There are the orthopedist and lung specialist (who doubles as TB specialist here) who take care of my TB treatment. Then there is the internist, who monitors my diabetes and high blood pressure, and those types of things. And, as is standard here, I have a family doctor who monitors everything, and helps me to keep the specialist doctors on their toes. In addition to all that, there is a "TB specialist" nurse, from the provincial health service, who also monitors my case.

It never ceases to amaze me that all this is covered by our health insurance. In the Philippines, all the medical treatment I've got here would have cost a fortune. But here, all doctors fees, medicines, hospital treatment (including all tests, scans, etc.) are covered by the insurance. In fact, the only extra expenses I have as a result of my sickness were: the TV/telephone fee at the hospital (you could ask to have this services at your bedside) , parking fees, and taxi fees (I need a special wheelchair taxi, since my knee is in a plaster cast after an operation to clean it). And that's it. I have no idea how much was spent on me.

It's not only that money is not a consideration when people get sick here; it's also the convenience of the whole system. I didn't need to fill in forms when I got admitted to the hospital. And it is easy to get medicines, and medical accessories; it was even possible to get nursing attention at home without too much fuzz (someone else filled up a form for this, and I just needed to sign :-) ).

While it is not nice to get sick anywhere; at least I'm sick here, where all I have to worry about is getting well.