In some ways I am lucky that this story is not as interesting as its predecessor, but in another way, not so fortunate. The second time I was admitted to a Budapest hospital in under three months, the experience was less shocking, the hospital was much nicer, and there wasn't a puzzled male nurse wearing a beer t-shirt with white capri pants. On the other hand, I was so incredibly sick this time that I would have much rather gone through the first experience all over again.
Early last week, I started developing symptoms of what I thought might be the flu or a stomach virus. By Thursday, I left work early and came home to sleep. I had a fever, nausea, and body aches. I delayed going to the doctor until the next morning, since I do not have a car and it would involve walking several blocks.
Friday morning was just as bad, though. My temperature was getting higher, so I waited until Ray was finished with work and we went to see the evening doctor, who speaks English. She wrote me some prescriptions in case she was wrong, but told me to first visit a specialist doctor nearby, because she thought I had appendicitis.
I told Ray the good news and we started off, taking the tram going the wrong way, then taking it back the right way to the subway station, but instead got a taxi, as I was feeling much worse.
The specialist didn't speak much English, but I had a note from the first doctor explaining what she thought was wrong, and a phrasebook to help. After a few minutes, she decided that the first doctor was probably right, and told me to go straight to the hospital. Again.
I was very sick and upset on the way to the hospital, a different one than last time. Once again, Hajni, our program director, cancelled her plans and drove to Budapest to join Ray and me at a hospital. Once again, Ray called my family to tell them I was in the hospital.
The doctors decided to observe me overnight after taking blood tests and x-rays, then to take the appendix in the morning if it seemed necessary. I passed the time by practicing how to say, "Important! I am allergic to penicillin!" in Hungarian.
Early Saturday morning, I was to have an ultrasound. The doctor said "a boy" would come by shortly to show me to the ultrasound room. "The boy" turned out to be a man in his thirties wearing pajamas and sandals, with the longest toes I have ever seen. He had a cotton ball taped on his hand where they had just taken his IV out.
Great. I wondered what my job would be here at the hospital while I was recovering.
The doctor visited shortly thereafter and told me there was no longer any reason to wait. So at about noon, a nurse came to wheel my bed into the operating room.
The bed had a bar arching above it from behind with three short pegs from which you could hang an IV bag. We had barely made it out of the room when we hit a bump and the full fluid bag fell onto my aching stomach. It hurt badly. He giggled and put it back on the peg.
We hit another bump. It fell on my stomach again. It hurt badly again. He laughed and put it back on the peg again, like you might do if you kept dropping the dishtowel you were trying to pick up from the kitchen floor.
The first round of anesthesia (pills) were working by now, but I think that the third time, we were entering the elevator. It fell on me again. I remember that much. I said something like, "Here, I'll hold it myself!" Nurse of the Year finally decided carry it alongside the bed.
We made it to the operating room, and the anesthesiologist asked why I was crying. I think I told him, "That idiot dropped this bag on my stomach three or four times." After that, I was out.
So. Time goes by, my appendix comes out, and unfortunately for me they were not able to use laparoscopy for whatever reason, though they had the capabilities. Oh well. I like scars. Scars are good for stories.
I woke up and Ray and Hajni were there. As has been my experience, the anesthesia made me very sick, so I spent the next few days feeling terrible and sleeping badly. Luckily, there was one particularly good nurse who was there some of the time, a young girl who reminded me of my sister, also a nurse. (Hajni even mentioned, "Look, she loves her job. She must be just like your sister.")
The food wasn't good in this hospital either, but much better than the 10-12 slices of bread and miscellaneous packets of butter, jam, Nutella, or liver cream that I got at the last one. But to tell the truth, one evening, dinner was 2 slices of bread and a little can with a picture of a baby chick on top and the word "pastetom"--presumably chicken paste. To the trash can.
Then came the afternoon when Hajni was visiting and Favorite Nurse came in and spoke to her for a minute, and Hajni said to me, "You will have a thing, I do not know what it is called...they put the water into your ass, it helps to clean the system." As I was trying to figure out why I needed an enema, apparently Favorite Nurse could tell what Hajni told me by the look on my face (and she did understand some English), because she quickly corrected her--it was my neighbor who was to have the enema, not me, and she wanted Hajni to step out since they haven't yet heard of curtains in Hungary.
And of course, there was one woman in my room of five patients who seemed to be feeling pretty good, and so took it upon herself to take care of the rest of us when Favorite Nurse wasn't there. (She had a much better bedside manner than most of the real nurses, one of whom was very rough with the poor old lady next to me.) Oh, I also saw her kissing a doctor once! So either that is her husband or the Hungarian doctors make it a habit of taking their mistresses from the hospital wards.
I can only suppose that she was assigned to care for us as a way of earning her keep because she was a good-natured patient (unlike me) and she just got too well to sit there idly in the bed. After all, I didn't pay a single penny for either doctor visit or the hospital stay and operation. All a part of keeping costs low in socialized medicine.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
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