Get well. If you're lucky.
GET WELL. IF YOU'RE LUCKY
I'm not one to pick on the wonderful work and effort put in by our dedicated nurses and some Doctors in this country. But I can only go by what I have personally experienced during the exceptionally long month or more it has been to try to get my wife well. What follows is the first couple of days of our experience.
Let me step back. August 4th Kristen complained about a sharp pain in the right area of the groin. I'm not a doctor and suggest we go to the hospital. Inside my head alarm bells are going off, APPENDIX! APPENDIX! Kristen is reluctant to go to the hospital so I call for the home Doctor Service. It's a great service that is bulk billed. The Doctor and a Nurse come to your home and visit the patient, in our case in our own bed.
A quick examination is carried out and the Doctor tells us to go to Emergency, now, in his very strong Indian accent. He said he thought Kristen had appendicitis. By this time it's very late in the night, around 11pm. We arrive at a hospital close to us after being advised that the larger hospital in our area is a blood bath on a Friday night. Due to all the pissed idiots, the Doctor said.
By the time we get to the hospital the pain is getting worse and Kristen can hardly walk. The triage people got to us pretty quickly giving Kristen a pain killer and some water, then doing some observations, and then asked us to wait for a bed.
Hours pass, we finally get a call to come in and inhabit a treatment room. Kristen takes the bed I take the big lounge chair there and then we wait. I'm panicking inside thinking my wife could be getting poisoned from the inside which is what happens with burst appendix; you can be dead in an hour I have heard. Kristen drops off to sleep, time passes and finally a Doctor arrives. He is African a very pleasant and caring man, after a painful examination he dispatches Kristen for a CT scan. By now the appendix issue has morphed into what he thought could be a cyst on her ovaries. Off she goes.
Some time later she is parked back in the room while the results are gathered. Another very long wait ensues. Nurses pop in and out checking on Kristen but none have answers for us. Some long time later, a very happy Doctor of Philippine origin arrives. He announces there is no problem with the appendix and there is no problem with the ovaries and he says we can go home. But he suggests we come back the next morning for an ultra-sound scan. I got a bit belligerent with him and asked for another opinion so he goes out and says he is going to talk to the Surgeon.
A long time passes and the Doctor returns, no sign of the Surgeon; he must be good because he, without any form of personal examination, deems my wife fit enough to go home. Yet again we are told to go. My wife can hardly stand up at this stage. Meanwhile she has a massive needle thing sticking out of her arm. I asked the Doctor to remove it after I said to him, "You can guarantee me my wife's appendix will not burst if I take her home?" "I will get it taken out," he says, referring to the needle thing, then he skulks out the door never to be seen again. Another long wait, probably an hour, a lady Doctor comes in. She looks on the bed and says to me as she points to my wife sleeping in vary bad pain, "Is this the patient?" I say yes.
The lady Doctor starts telling me how awful it is for my wife, "What a horrible thing to happen," she says in a beautiful Indian accent; she was lovely. I said, "What are you talking about? We want this needle out, so we can go home." The penny dropped and the Doctor realised we were not her patients. "Before you go can you take that plumbing out of my wife's arm," I say. She takes it out and we leave into the freezing night, my wife hardly able to walk and suffering immensely.
9am the next morning, a Saturday, we go to medical imaging to get an ULTRA-SOUND done as ordered up by the Doctors the night before. One real bitch of a thing is, you have to go back to emergency and wait until you can see a Doctor to get the report. We struggle back to the Emergency. There we wait for two hours, then we are gathered up with about ten other patients and led off to the hospital GP access to wait, yet again. There were sick kids, one little fellow was coughing up blood, and a baby had a soaring temperature. His parents ended up leaving with him for another hospital.
We are there for a couple of hours to be told the GP hasn't arrived, by now my agro gland is starting to swell. Kristen is in terrible pain just sitting, so I go to the fortified reception area where a lady, is frantically SMSing someone and having a lovely time. I demanded a bed for my wife in a very dominant tone. The girl throws her phone into her bag and disappears through one of the many treatment room doors.
Moments later she is back asking me to bring Kristen through. She has found us a small thin bed in what looked like a medical storeroom. At least Kristen is now comfortable and able to sleep the wait away. About four hours after we were dispatched to the GP area, a very helpful Aussie Doctor examines Kristen (yep more pain for her the poor thing), he looks at the imaging results and says, "I think it is your appendix you better go back to emergency."
This time he gets Kristen a wheelchair we head back. Now the Emergency room is full of flu ridden individuals, coughing and sneezing everywhere and a whole host of damaged children from Saturday sports day. Bloody hell! We check in with them and then we are told we have to wait AGAIN.
An hour or so later the pain is getting to Kristen so I ask the Nurse for a bed for my wife. She gets us into the same treatment room as the night before. It's dark outside now. Finally another Doctor comes in does an examination and says, "There is nothing wrong with you, you can go home." He refers us to our GP for further analysis. It has been nearly twelve hours since we arrived back at the hospital.
Clearly there is something wrong she is in massive pain, can hardly stand up or walk. So we struggle off into the cold winter night again. It is clear from my observations that there is a numbers game going on in these emergency centres. There is a shuffling of sick people around from Emergency to GP centres to show in my opinion that all things are good with the health system. My wife has been suffering for a month so far. But this story will be continued in a future blog as we are still undergoing examinations. I will tell you of the next part of the hospital journey, another hospital near us. To be continued.
I'm not one to pick on the wonderful work and effort put in by our dedicated nurses and some Doctors in this country. But I can only go by what I have personally experienced during the exceptionally long month or more it has been to try to get my wife well. What follows is the first couple of days of our experience.
Let me step back. August 4th Kristen complained about a sharp pain in the right area of the groin. I'm not a doctor and suggest we go to the hospital. Inside my head alarm bells are going off, APPENDIX! APPENDIX! Kristen is reluctant to go to the hospital so I call for the home Doctor Service. It's a great service that is bulk billed. The Doctor and a Nurse come to your home and visit the patient, in our case in our own bed.
A quick examination is carried out and the Doctor tells us to go to Emergency, now, in his very strong Indian accent. He said he thought Kristen had appendicitis. By this time it's very late in the night, around 11pm. We arrive at a hospital close to us after being advised that the larger hospital in our area is a blood bath on a Friday night. Due to all the pissed idiots, the Doctor said.
By the time we get to the hospital the pain is getting worse and Kristen can hardly walk. The triage people got to us pretty quickly giving Kristen a pain killer and some water, then doing some observations, and then asked us to wait for a bed.
Hours pass, we finally get a call to come in and inhabit a treatment room. Kristen takes the bed I take the big lounge chair there and then we wait. I'm panicking inside thinking my wife could be getting poisoned from the inside which is what happens with burst appendix; you can be dead in an hour I have heard. Kristen drops off to sleep, time passes and finally a Doctor arrives. He is African a very pleasant and caring man, after a painful examination he dispatches Kristen for a CT scan. By now the appendix issue has morphed into what he thought could be a cyst on her ovaries. Off she goes.
Some time later she is parked back in the room while the results are gathered. Another very long wait ensues. Nurses pop in and out checking on Kristen but none have answers for us. Some long time later, a very happy Doctor of Philippine origin arrives. He announces there is no problem with the appendix and there is no problem with the ovaries and he says we can go home. But he suggests we come back the next morning for an ultra-sound scan. I got a bit belligerent with him and asked for another opinion so he goes out and says he is going to talk to the Surgeon.
A long time passes and the Doctor returns, no sign of the Surgeon; he must be good because he, without any form of personal examination, deems my wife fit enough to go home. Yet again we are told to go. My wife can hardly stand up at this stage. Meanwhile she has a massive needle thing sticking out of her arm. I asked the Doctor to remove it after I said to him, "You can guarantee me my wife's appendix will not burst if I take her home?" "I will get it taken out," he says, referring to the needle thing, then he skulks out the door never to be seen again. Another long wait, probably an hour, a lady Doctor comes in. She looks on the bed and says to me as she points to my wife sleeping in vary bad pain, "Is this the patient?" I say yes.
The lady Doctor starts telling me how awful it is for my wife, "What a horrible thing to happen," she says in a beautiful Indian accent; she was lovely. I said, "What are you talking about? We want this needle out, so we can go home." The penny dropped and the Doctor realised we were not her patients. "Before you go can you take that plumbing out of my wife's arm," I say. She takes it out and we leave into the freezing night, my wife hardly able to walk and suffering immensely.
9am the next morning, a Saturday, we go to medical imaging to get an ULTRA-SOUND done as ordered up by the Doctors the night before. One real bitch of a thing is, you have to go back to emergency and wait until you can see a Doctor to get the report. We struggle back to the Emergency. There we wait for two hours, then we are gathered up with about ten other patients and led off to the hospital GP access to wait, yet again. There were sick kids, one little fellow was coughing up blood, and a baby had a soaring temperature. His parents ended up leaving with him for another hospital.
We are there for a couple of hours to be told the GP hasn't arrived, by now my agro gland is starting to swell. Kristen is in terrible pain just sitting, so I go to the fortified reception area where a lady, is frantically SMSing someone and having a lovely time. I demanded a bed for my wife in a very dominant tone. The girl throws her phone into her bag and disappears through one of the many treatment room doors.
Moments later she is back asking me to bring Kristen through. She has found us a small thin bed in what looked like a medical storeroom. At least Kristen is now comfortable and able to sleep the wait away. About four hours after we were dispatched to the GP area, a very helpful Aussie Doctor examines Kristen (yep more pain for her the poor thing), he looks at the imaging results and says, "I think it is your appendix you better go back to emergency."
This time he gets Kristen a wheelchair we head back. Now the Emergency room is full of flu ridden individuals, coughing and sneezing everywhere and a whole host of damaged children from Saturday sports day. Bloody hell! We check in with them and then we are told we have to wait AGAIN.
An hour or so later the pain is getting to Kristen so I ask the Nurse for a bed for my wife. She gets us into the same treatment room as the night before. It's dark outside now. Finally another Doctor comes in does an examination and says, "There is nothing wrong with you, you can go home." He refers us to our GP for further analysis. It has been nearly twelve hours since we arrived back at the hospital.
Clearly there is something wrong she is in massive pain, can hardly stand up or walk. So we struggle off into the cold winter night again. It is clear from my observations that there is a numbers game going on in these emergency centres. There is a shuffling of sick people around from Emergency to GP centres to show in my opinion that all things are good with the health system. My wife has been suffering for a month so far. But this story will be continued in a future blog as we are still undergoing examinations. I will tell you of the next part of the hospital journey, another hospital near us. To be continued.
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The hospital mentioned in this blog is now under investigation for having too few staff on at any given time. Which in my opinion was a real driver of the problems we had there. Some good news there. But the health issue still lingers with my wife still in pain.
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