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| The Lockdowns Sent Me to Emergency (Page 2 of 3) |
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I worried that perhaps my surgery had not held. After the
surgery I noticed that my scrotum still looked 5 times as big as
normal. When the doctor came around, he looked at it and said
that it was not my intestine that dropped into my scrotum, but
that it was fluid. He suggested that if I was worried we could
do a CT scan. Looking at my scrotum, I could see that it was not
the same as before. It did seem more like fluid than my
intestines, but the next day it had swollen to 10 times its
normal size, and it felt so hard that I could no longer conclude
that it was fluid, so I decided to go ahead with the CT scan. I
was quoted 10,000 baht for the scan, or about $330 U.S. dollars.
A friend of mine said that in the U.S. a CT scan would cost
about $10,000. The next day I thought the doctor would call me into his office and show me the results of the CT scan, or at the very least stop by my bed and show me some printed pictures or something. Instead, after paying all that money for a scan, all I got was the say so of the performing surgeon that it was nothing more than fluid. Monday morning 8 nursing students came to visit me. They were all quite cute, and they were all really sweet girls. All eight of them stood around my bed and talked with me. That was highlight of my day. All night every night I stared at the walls and the clock, but a few minutes each day I had a chance to talk with these really sweet Thai girls. One of them, looking at her notes as if it were part of her assignment, asked me how my stay was. I explained how I was never able to sleep for more than 5 minutes, because every 5 minutes something woke me up. Perhaps she was part of the feedback loop and consequently told her supervisor. If so, I give them credit at least for that. I continued to be awakened all night long, but it was never as bad as that first night and I got some stretches of sleep that were a little longer than before. I had brought my creidt card, which had a limit of 100,000 baht, but some of that limit had already auto-payed some of my monthy bills. The doctor at the first hospital told me this hospital would only cost me one tenth of what that hospital would cost. I didn't know how accurate that was, and besides, what if for emergency surgery the bill at his hospital came to one million baht? One tenth of that would still over-extend my credit card. I worried about what would happen and how I would resolve the situation if I didn't have enough to cover the bill. Before the surgery I asked the doctor how much the bill would be, all he would tell me was that it would be at least 60,000 baht. That wasn't very comforting because even a million baht is "at least 60,000." Thai hospitals are real sticklers about their money. I once went to Payathai Hospital and the bill was more than I had anticipated. I told them that I didn't have enough money, that I would have to leave to get more money, but they would not allow me to leave until I had paid my bill in full! I argued with the lady in charge for 30 mintues telling her that I didn't have that much money on me, and that if they didn't allow me to leave I could not possibly pay the bill. I don't remember the conditions or what the breaking point was, but they finally agreed to let me go get the money. I think she was afraid that if I left, and as a result I didn't pay my bill, that she would lose her job. The hospital I was in now was just as bad. On my third day a lady came up to me and demanded that I walk down to another floor with her to pay all of the bill that had accumulated so far. I was in pain and asked her if I could just pay the whole bill when I was ready to leave. She would not accept that and demanded that I come down stairs now and pay the bill. We argued for a while, some of the nurses siding with me, until they finally convinced her to bring her credit card reader up to my room and have me pay at my bed. From the start being in a Thai hospital felt much like being in a prison, and not just because you are staring at the four walls. Once you enter a hospital here you cannot leave. Only the doctor will determine when you can leave. After surgery I was told to walk as frrequently as I could, so I walked up and down the hallway just outside our room. There is another hallway that runs parallel to and just through the doors from that first hallway. Looking through the doors I would always see a security guard sitting at a desk, which I always thought strange since it didn't seem that he was guarding anything.There didn't seem to be anything there, so I thought I could also walk that hallway as well, but the second I went through those doors I was told that I was not permitted in that area. That seemed a bit strange to me. One day near the end of my stay I decided to buy something from downstairs at the base of the building. I entered the same elevator we used when we went to get my CT scan, but I found that the lift could only be activated with a key. Soon the door slid open and some staff members entered. I hoped that I could just ride with them to the bottom, but they immediately wanted to know where I was going, and physically a whole escort of people took me back to my room. It later dawned on me that there must be a whole set of normal elevator doors on the other side of that wall. That's why we weren't allowed in that hallway and the security guard would watch to make sure that none of us escaped! (next page) |