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Published: December 11th 2012
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A great hospital if you need one!
The medical services received were great - we had no worries with having surgery here Well, I finally couldn't take it any longer and decided to part company with some really irritating gallstones. The plan originally was to wait until we return to the US but that would've meant waiting until January and these suckers were really beginning to irritate me (sorry couldn't resist). There is a public hospital and a private hospital in Lagos. Our friends Sandra and John told us the private hospital was much smaller and the care was quite good. So on November 19th after a rather excruciating three-day attack we went up to the hospital and made an appointment for the following day to meet the surgeon. Luckily I had all of my records from when I got the diagnosis I had gallstones back in September in the Azores. The surgeon looked over the information and the sonograms and agreed we should take them out as soon as we could. That day I did the pre-op blood test, EKG, chest x-ray, etc. A week later November 27th I checked into the hospital at 7:30 AM and was shown to my hospital room. A quick note- the hospital actually has opening hours of 8AM – midnight, therefore had to buzz the intercom
A comfortable room
The hospital room typically can hold 2 beds, but this time it only had 1 in it so a nice private room! for someone to let us in and escort us in through a darkened reception area and up to the 2
nd floor. Never knew of a hospital that closed for part of the day before. In very short order the prelims were taken care of and I was rolled into the operating room at nine o'clock. Interesting to note up to this point every nurse I had dealt with was a male. By 11:30 AM I was back in my room (according to Janice, I was off in lala land not surprisingly). The nurse that returned me to my room gave Janice a small vial containing some of the gallstones they had removed. You can imagine Janice's overwhelming enthusiasm at receiving such a gift. About half an hour later the surgeon showed up and talk with Janice for a few minutes. By late that evening I was walking around the corridors visiting with the nurses having chamomile tea and eating biscuits. They kept me in the hospital overnight as a standard precaution. By Wednesday morning I was feeling a little pain but things were good. I had seen the surgeon late in the afternoon on Tuesday and he came in again
Hospital Chic
Hospital issued fashion, but Bob had the shoes to complete the outfit Wednesday morning. Apparently happy with my recovery he informed me that I could go home after lunch, he just wanted to make sure that I could eat a regular meal and not experience any problem. Janice showed up around 11:30AM, I had lunch, took a nap and by three o'clock we were on our way by taxi back to the marina. I needed to return to the hospital on Friday so they could change my bandages and the following Thursday, December 6th I had my staples removed.
The care I received at the hospital was as good as or better than any care I received in the United States. The nurses have far fewer patients to keep track of and therefore are very attentive. They are very careful not to disturb you when sleeping, check on you regularly and are very professional. The other thing I noticed was that even though my blood pressure and pulse was checked regularly I was not connected to all kinds of high-tech monitoring equipment all the time and equipment was only brought into the room when needed. The cost of the entire process from beginning to end was $5,500. Yes that's correct including
Mr Waller or Mr Robert?
Found out culturally they call people by their first name rather than surname so always was referred to as Mr. Robert the night stay in a hospital, all medication, all follow-up visits and all pre-op testing. In fact I was told that if I needed to stay another day or two that would be covered by the $5, 500. Out of curiosity we went online and found out that in the majority of cases in the US this is outpatient surgery and with no overnight stay in the hospital the cost was easily around $14,000 with a jump to about $20K if an overnight was required. When I had my staples removed I had an opportunity to speak with the surgeon for quite some time. His explanation for the significant difference in cost was first off salaries and second off malpractice insurance. When I commented on what I saw as an appropriate application of technology in my care he agreed but said that his colleagues in the United States often had no choice in using every form of technology available due to the fear of lawsuits. He did say that he had noticed that things were starting to change in Portugal and that he had started to see the very beginnings of a tendency to overuse technology simply to cover yourself
Quite the Gift!
When Janice received these she figured the biologist, Bob, must have asked for them, but it wasn't the case - they just give them to you I guess as "proof" in the case of lawsuits.
I was extremely impressed with the care received in the hospital; it was first class all the way. I am now feeling great and a few days ago Janice and I went out to our favorite Indian restaurant and I had no problems at all, life is good.
As promised we will still give you an update on our trip to Sintra, but with my being “not up to par” I hadn’t gotten to it as I promised Janice I would write that one!
We are flying this Friday, December 14
th back to the US so will concentrate on also getting you up to date on what we have been doing while in Lagos.
Have a great holiday!
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