The Wonderful World of Socialized Medical Care

[sarabyrd 18,767]

Socialized Medical Care Rules!

 

I hate fainting. Really. Hate, hate, hate the feeling beforehand and afterwards. I think it’s the losing control of myself that bugs me. So, once again, I was lying on the ground, this time at 11 pm on the floor at home in front of the computer, fighting off a fainting spell. Sudden dizziness and nausea had given way to the realization that I was going to faint so I slid off the office chair onto the floor, put my legs up on the chair and ordered Cat to call 112.

 

Between 11:15 pm Wednesday and 3 am Thursday I received the following treatments:

 

emergency ECG by the paramedics

heart and lungs listened to

oxygen by tube up the nose (disgusting, like a prolonged visit to the proctologist)

blood pressure automatically measured every 15 minutes

pulmonary activity, heartbeat, pulse and oxygen saturation monitored

full blood panel

saline infusion

another ECG in the ER

CAT scan of the lungs with contrast medium

a couple liters of heparin infusion

bedside cardiac sonography

 

All of this with the flick of an insurance card. No down-payment, no credit card scan, nothing.

 

The diagnosis “pulmonary embolism and enlarged lower right chamber” made me take a big gulp of air but as Cat was in the room with me I didn’t make a big thing of it. What was much worse is that they were taking me to the same ICU where Scogs had died almost two years ago. Luckily, I was taken to ward 13f, he’d been on 13e. Nightmarish enough; I would have broken down in the same ward.

 

All the doctors were kind, competent and willing to answer questions, even regarding the worst case scenario (haemolysis – don’t go down that road!). They made me as comfy as possible with a clamp on my finger, a blood pressure cuff around my arm (that invariably inflated just as I was falling asleep), an IV needle with color-coded plugs in the back of my hand, saline and heparin (and later on a wonderful opiate) dripping into my vein, and a double tube stuck up my nostrils.

 

Later that day they wheeled my bed down to sonography to locate the thrombosis in my leg that had caused the embolism, another cool machine to help with the diagnosis. After that I was released from the Zoo Called ICU (see following entry) and brought to an observation ward, aka Hell’s Antechamber.

 

Related topic: Munich on Crutches

[MonksTown 104]

It's a communist conspiracy you know!

 

Hope you are feeling better soon :)

[NoBullJim 3,685]

Sounds like they treated you well Sara. All the best to you. get well soon.

[Lexicon 81]

Compare this to non-socialized medicine (my country):

 

You go to the hospital. They have to treat you even though you have no insurance, so they (kinda) do. Then as soon as you can walk they boot you out. Then the next week the bills start showing up...$10,000 here, $500 there, etc.

 

You couldn't afford the $1000 a month for insurance in the first place, and make too much for the welfare system, but now you're lucky, you're treated, but you're going to lose your house and all your belongings in the bankruptcy brought about by your 4 hours in the ER.

[Bipa 5,814]

Aw, Sara... sorry to hear about your troubles. Makes my own little aches and pains not worth mentioning at all. Get better soon!

 

[robinson100 12,792]

Get well soon Sara!

- and be happy that the health service did so much for you and actually found out why you fainted! As you say, fainting is pretty shitty, but if nobody can find out why, then it´s even worse!

[sarabyrd 18,767]

I didn't faint, I am much too stubborn to faint.

[kthy 405]

 

oxygen by tube up the nose (disgusting, like a prolonged visit to the proctologist)

You need to find a better proctologist stat! He's clearly doing something wrong.

 

 

(and later on a wonderful opiate)

I found out the hard way that opiates make me vomit uncontrollably when I was hospitalized with a broken leg and ankle. Shame, because them doctors have some really good stuff.

 

Best wishes for your recovery in pinko commie-land :)

[sarabyrd 18,767]

The ICU is a Zoo

 

We’ve all seen ICU wards on TV – one person in a huge room, semi-darkness, silence except for the muffled padding feet of pretty female nurses and young and handsome (or gray-haired and concerned) male doctors. Even the respirator is silent.

 

Forget it. In reality you have curtained bays (three or four, I’m not sure) and two detached cubicles with sunlight streaming in through the windows, doctors and nurses (of both genders) and cleaning staff talking on the phone, discussing patients’ conditions, giving and taking orders, bumping around with mops and brooms, physiotherapists convincing some half-unconscious geezer that he should sit on the edge of the bed and barely catching him in time when he collapses, respirators going whooo-phsh, whooo-phsh, dialysis machines going rrrr-cluck, rrr-cluck, and alarms going off at all times: beep-beep-beep (infusion empty), bing-bing (oxygen saturation), bong-bong-bong (blood pressure or pulse), etc.

 

Add to this the long-timer (four weeks) in the bed next to mine who didn’t bother using the bell, he just hammered on the bed railings until someone came (or told him to stop it). He had some kind of tube down his throat that they yanked during my short stay, and I’m sure that they regretted it as the expletive old epitaph didn’t shut up afterwards.

 

I was exhausted and in pain; it seems that after the clots in your lungs dissolve they react with a kind of charley horse. As I am allergic to metamizol (Novalgin) the nurse gave me something else, some kind of opiate – he didn’t tell me what but oh my Lord was it good! I floated away and dozed for all of 75 minutes. Every now and then a nurse would drop by and give me a weird look but even that stopped after a while.

 

When I woke up I needed the bed-pan so I pushed my button – no light. Pushed again – nix. Twisted my head and saw that it had been unplugged. That’s why the nurses kept coming by – short circuit in the bell, and they thought that I was ringing for them every few minutes.

 

After the sonography the ICU doctors decided that I could be transferred to the observation ward. The good-looking but not handsome young male doctor gave me a wave and said, “We never say Auf Wiedersehen here, just Alles Gute!”. I replied with “In better times; I’ll come by with chocolates”.

 

Next: So you thought that you chose the lesser of the two evils – Observation ward 5ew

[Binaural 744]

Get well soon!

[Pas 8,133]

Glad you're on the mend.

 

This is worth a giggle.

 

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-august-13-2009/glenn-beck-s-operation

[Guest]

Get well soon!

[sarabyrd 18,767]

Hell’s Antechamber – Ward 5ew

 

As Verbal said in “The Usual Suspects”, the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. The Schwabing hospital has a similar policy – the Devil wears blue and pretends to be your best friend and caretaker.

 

Claiming to be considerate, they put me into a double room with a 98-year-old woman who had broken her leg in a fall on the bathroom floor in her multi-bedroom apartment in Schwabing, three floors up, no elevator. Had a stroke during the operation, bad veins, altogether a quiet, unobtrusive roomie. Yeah, sure.

 

Old Dear, and the staff agreed with me on this, should no way have been on an observation ward; I saw patients in ICU who were doing better than she was. It’s the typical: Get them stable and out of my ward so that they suddenly and unexpectedly die somewhere else. She required almost constant attention, moving every couple hours to prevent bedsores, this medication, that blood sample, automatic blood pressure, changing diapers in the middle of the night etc. Not to mention unmotivated cries of pain and the reiterating "Wo bin ich?" and later on the banging against the bed railings in the middle of the night. I swear, if I hadn't been hooked to the monitor I could have gone over and slapped her.

 

The “w” in the ward name means Wachstation, i.e. as in the ICU the patients are hooked up to monitors showing heart/pulse, blood pressure, lung activity and oxygen saturation, these monitors have a feed into the nurses’ station. Each of these functions has its own distinct alarm tone, and I grew to hate them, along with the ear-wrenching beeeeep-beeeeep of an empty IV infusion at 2 am. The nurses (both genders) are friendly but overworked, they seem to have recently lost 30% of their staff due to budget cuts; generally they’re so busy taking vitals, completing charts and checking and refilling the storage closets that you can’t get a straight answer to an easy question or even a drink of water (handed out in pint-sized pitchers - WTF?). The worst day was Sunday when they wouldn’t even unhook me so I could brush my teeth and wash my hair.

 

There is a connecting door between my room and a more-or-less afterthought cubbyhole room next door without storage space or a washbowl, so the nurses were back and forth through that door just about all day and night long, about 4 feet from my head, getting supplies, filling a bowl to bathe bedridden patients, bringing food etc. So after not sleeping for hours during the night due to constant disturbances with the Old Dear and Next Door, daytime naps were impossible because of the commotion and indistinct hubbub of Next Door’s visiting voices swelling to speech every now and then every time the door was opened.

 

Did I try to get transferred? Did I ever!

 

Coming up: The Plague Hits Ward 5ew and I Am Not Surprised

[trule 33]

Its a hospital, not a hotel. If it were comfortable many people would not want to leave!

 

Best bet, good ear plugs and eye shades, and then a quick recovery.

[sarabyrd 18,767]

The Old Dear should have been on ICU, not a regular ward. The staff repeatedly apologized for her behavior and would gladly have passed her on to what they call Pre-Rehab and my Ma (who worked in a the medical industry in the US for decades) calls SNF (skilled nursing facility), pronounced "sniff" if you're polite or "snuff" if you're realistic about the Old Dear's condition.

[JSD 609]

Well, look. You have health care and when you leave, you won't have a 100,000 dollar bill waiting for you at home.

 

I had the misfortune of having a mild heart attack in the States 5 years ago. I had BlueCrass insurance. I went to the emergency room and had to circle the face that indicated how much pain I was in. I picked the next to the last one, so they thought i could wait. ... for two hours. After I passed out, the put me into a room, where I waited another hour. A lady came in and started shooting me with morphine, and i asked her why while I explained that I needed to drive home later... she said I had a heart attack, doped me up and I waited another hour for the doctor.

 

Anyway, after they convinced me I needed two stents (which I later found I didn't need), I was in a joint room with some old geezer... with one TV with two remotes. We had remote wars for about 2 hours until I got out of bed, dragged my IV while sporting that cute little backless nightgown--arse hanging out for all to see... screaming for another room... well, come to find out, this guy was a real idiot and I was the third roommate to jump ship... I fortunately got a private room for the two nights I was to be there.

 

Here in Germany, I have a friend who just recently had a heart attack (He is only 38!). He was sent to rehab for 4 weeks after his two week hospital stay. I was out of the hospital in 4 days. The next week, I received a bill for 15,000 dollars. I was already paying 750 a month to BlueKrass--and I was unemloyed.

 

Oh, the doctors here also diagnosed me with a condition that they think caused my heart attack and has since been treated. The docs in the states never looked for the cause.

 

On the other hand, I had to have deviated septum last year and can understand your frustration with the hospitals. It's different here, that's all.

 

It could be a LOT worse for you. Consider yourself lucky... get better soon. Be happy that you won't get hit with a huge bill at the end of it all. When we're in the "middle" of it, it seems like such a big deal. But as the nurse said to me after surgery last year... "hospitals are a place to get treated and recover so that you can go home and heal. In 3 days, you won't even remember my name... and that's a good thing!"

 

She was right.

[punch 70]

BlueCross- so happy to be out of their fangs. My husband actually put off major surgery on his thyroid for two years, because we couldn't afford it in the US. Every month we collectively threw almost a grand their way and still we would have had to cover $5000 plus 30% of the cost of the surgery. We estimated it would have cost us at least $15,000. The cost here? 75€: 30€ for the three days he spent in the hospital, €25 for the initial consultation with the surgeon (top 3 in her field in Germany), 20€ for the quarterly office fees to cover visits to a general practitioner, endocrinioligist, ENT, blood doctor and numerous tests. Plus they actually kept him in the icu for the first night as one of the complications from that particular surgery is spontaneous, heavy internal bleeding usually requiring emergency surgery. In the US this would have been outpatient. Enough said.

[Steven192 272]

@ JSD. How did they get the Stents into you if you were up and running about the same night?

 

Do the US Docs do that through the arm thing like the french do or do they just carve a big hole in your chest?

 

The Germans tend to go through the groin which makes getting up a bit dangerous and difficult for a couple of days as the tennis ball gets in the way.

[JSD 609]

75€!!! and with all those paid sick-recovery days from work not cutting into you yearly 5/6 weeks of vacation time, what are you going to do!???

 

We are lucky--even if the hospital culture is a bit weird here. But 4 days in a hospital with tampons stuffed up my nose deep in my sinuses does not make for good memories. lol I don't care if I was staying at the Ritz, it still would have been miserable. In the states, this is done as outpatient. I was in the hospital for 4 days, with 3 in the ICU. But I can barely remember it... thank God!

 

Sarah won't remember it in a week! hopefully.

[BattalionBoy 17]

 

My husband actually put off major surgery on his thyroid for two years, because we couldn't afford it in the US. In the US this would have been outpatient. Enough said.

 

Did your German doctor use lemon juice on the operation wounds?

 

http://www.thelocal.de/national/20100116-24613.html