Friday, April 1, 2011

I just wanted to experience Sharjah's hospital!

After a great competition in Dubai, I spent the next few days in the hospital. I've had an abscess in my lower back for a few days, and stubborn me waited until the pain became unbearable to actually see a doctor about it. I finally did late Saturday night. I saw the dorm nurse and she immediately took me to the health clinic and called a doctor. She gave me some pain killers, antibiotics and told me to come back first thing in the morning.

The next morning (Sunday) right upon entering the health clinic, I was reexamined. Anna was called and I was promptly put in an ambulance and taken to the hospital. The "emergency surgery" was going to have to wait a few hours for insurance to be taken care of. This was such a nightmare. My primary insurance back in the states, although an international plan, would not cover it up front. In my state of pain, I didn't care to pay. I would have handed them cash if it would have moved things along faster. But alas, we waited, made phone calls, and found out the MexEx insurance (the student insurance that we had to buy through ISEP) would cover everything upfront.

A few hours later, I was laying in a very nice private hospital room waiting for the anesthesiologist to knock me out. Before I knew it, I was waking up in the middle of the night covered in bandages, pain-free and slightly loopy. The doctor finally came back to talk to me in the morning and told me exactly what was going on. He said he drained two mugfuls of fluid from the abscess and that it was the largest abscess he's ever seen in his 30 years of surgery. I felt slightly accomplished. He also said I really should have seen a doctor a lot sooner.

I spend another 2 days in the hospital (3 days total) just laying around. Anna stayed with me the entire first day (God bless her and everything she did for me! :-) ), then she brought Caitlin, Irfan and Britton the next day, and her and Caitlin came to bring me home on Tuesday. I was so grateful for them coming, it really made me feel a lot better about everything. Linda sent a beautiful arrangement of flowers and someone sent a fruit bowl and smaller flowers, but they didn't have a card, so unfortunately I don't know who they were from.

The hospital, for the most part, was really nice. The room was great, had a nice flatscreen TV, even had a fold out bed. It was kept very clean; a woman must have come in twice a day to clean it. The nurses were friendly (some didn't speak very good english and we had a few "lost in translation" moments, but most everything got across ok) until one kicked me out.. literally. On tuesday morning, the nurse told me I would be able to leave in about 1-2 hours, so I called Anna. Her and caitlin arrived and we just waited. I was waiting for someone to discharge me so I could leave. Well one of the nurses walked in and literally, almost yelling, said "what are you still doing here?!" We all just kind of stared until I said I was waiting for someone to release me. She said she was waiting for me to go to the cashier before she would bring my medication and I could go. Not something I'm used to in the states. So I had to change, go downstairs, check out, then come back, before they would remove the needle in my hand and let me go. Every time I saw her after that she would explain how there is a breast cancer patient waiting for my room and I was supposed to leave hours ago! Well.. no one gave me any instructions! How was I supposed to know what to do?

So anyway, I came back to my dorm and spend the next day just laying around and relaxing. Now I'm stuck doing make up work and trying to catch up everything I missed. So everything is ok now, and I'll return to classes on Sunday.

Hopefully that was my first, last, and only trip to a UAE hospital!

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