Sep 28, 2008 Posted in Random Thoughts, Travel Stories

Brazilian Hospitals. Yuck.

Wow! Here is an experience for you. I spent the last nine days in a public hospital in Brazil – three of those nine days in ICU.

I started getting a sore throat on Friday, February 15th and by Saturday morning I was alternating between sweating like a madman and freezing to death. Meanwhile my throat was getting worse and worse so I checked myself in to the hospital.

Hold on. I made that sound too easy. I should give you more of the facts. I’m an idiot and I didn’t buy any travel insurance this visit. I’ve been here so many times and never had a problem, I figured, “Why bother?”.

Here’s why…

I arrived at the hospital at 10am on Saturday just drenched in sweat and shaking like a leaf. I couldn’t even open my eyes because it felt like there were daggers in them. I was in to see a 12 year old doctor within half an hour and he sent me for blood tests.

It was two hours before we saw the results and then another half-hour to get in to see Dr. Doogie again. He didn’t believe the results so sent me back to have them repeated. Somewhere between having the blood taken and getting the results, I black out and end up in an “observation room” where I lay shaking uncontrollably for 4 hours while nurses talked about my symptoms being psychological.

One even yelled at me and pinned down my arm with her leg when she couldn’t get the I.V. in my tremoring arm. After four attempts on my right arm and another two on my left she finally got me hooked up.

The second blood test was never found yet I was admitted officially at about 7pm and quarantined until someone could figure out what was wrong. The third set of blood tests came back identical to the first so I wasn’t going anywhere.

That was not even a tiny fraction of all that had happened during Day One of my stay and I was there NINE DAYS! If you want to hear the whole story you’ll have to wait for the book. It will be called, “Nine Days in a Public Hospital in Brazil (or) Why You Really Want to Consider Travel Insurance”. It will be ready by the middle of March.

BTW, I’m better now. I’ve been released and ordered to lay low for a week or so and go in for more tests.

The experience was an incredible one. I’ve never seen such a combination of incompetence and sympathy in my life. I met some of the nicest people on the face of the earth and I saw the worst treatment you could imagine.

At the end of the day I’m happy to be alive and I have a new perspective on things. When I think about the whole experience I think of Mike Modanno. Mike is a hockey player and a consummate pro. A few years ago he got rocked and taken off the ice on a stretcher. Of course, the cameras were everywhere and when he came to he waved and gave all the fans a big thumbs up.

Unfortunately, the emergency staff dropped Mike as they were loading him into the ambulance. He was in a neck collar and stapped onto the stretcher so he couldn’t do anything. Instead, his eyes just bulged open in a combination of fear and disbelief. He was going down and there was nothing he could do.

That was the look on my face for the last nine days.