Hospital Day…
I spent 10 am to 5 pm on Thursday at a local Portuguese Hospital. It was weirdly a good experience and further cemented my opinion of how bad the American health care system is.
I’ve been having a weird fluttering feeling a few inches below my waistband for about 5 days. It isn’t painful, more like a muscle twitch/spasm. I am pretty sure it started on Saturday with a little flutter for 5 seconds but I can’t really remember. I did a new workout on Monday and that could have pulled something, along with another new workout on Tuesday… but who knows. Anyway, it started lasting longer and I was worried it was Crohn’s disease-related. I haven’t gotten an inflammation test since I was in the USA in late 2019 (with covid I decided I should just avoid the doctor for a while).
My anxiety was so high at that point I needed to go and try to get some answers and make sure it wasn’t serious. So I went to the emergency room as the first appointment I could get with a local gastroenterologist was July 1st (beats back home where the doctor is booked for a full 6 months and I have to ask him to squeeze me in somewhere…). And, Lindsey came with me to help, her Portuguese is much better than the two words I know.
I think we waited 5 minutes to see a doctor in the emergency room, he admitted me to get some tests to see what was going on. I think we waited another 20 minutes and saw the 2nd doctor. We talked to him for a while and he ordered some tests to look at inflammation and some other metrics. It was really nice as he actually talked to me and it was the 2nd longest I’ve ever gotten to talk to a doctor (the other being in Croatia). He wasn’t in a rush to get me out like every American doctor I’ve been to. Then I waited and got two vials of blood pulled, some urine, and then I waited for test results. It took a few hours and everything looked good, but he ordered a 2nd batch of tests as he had an idea it might be a microscopic kidney stone maybe. So I then got an x-ray and ultrasound. All done very promptly and efficiently… it was kinda amazing. Then I stayed there to wait for all the results (I read some really good books which was nice). Everything looks good and they made me a follow-up appointment for mid-June.
The cost? 40 Euros… and health insurance for my entire family in Portugal is around 175 euros a month. My guess is in the United States I would be looking at a bill between $900 to $2,500 dollars to me, plus paying $1,400 a month for shitty insurance that covers nothing before a $6,000 dollar individual detectable.
Friday I had more fluttering, but after Saturday it went away. My guess is a weird muscle pull given how many lunges and side lunges I did but who knows.
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