The joys of private health care - Bangkok diaries Vol. 1
Well ladies and gentlemen, the Princess has returned to Bangkok but in keeping with the rather unpredictable path my life has been taking over the last few months it turns out that I will only be here for a month and as of April 1st, I will be back on Koh Tao and happily back in my little office by the sea. YAY! but for the time being I am in Bangkok taking care of what needs to be taken care of. Luckily for me I have a bevvy of amazing friends up here and have been fortunate enough to have my own room set up in "Chateau Sammut" with Carrie and my lovely little niece Abigail. So all is not lost ;)
I'm hoping during my month here to spend some time chronicling the eccentricities, quirks, joys and frustrations of "the big smog" since during my years of residence here I got a bit too wrapped up in marking highschool essays and exams and let my blogging fall by the wayside. It's nice to come back and see the city through the eyes of someone just passing through. Hopefully my slightly less hectic schedule this time around will allow me to give you all a little peak inside the mysteries of my on again, off again home.
Along with easy access to cheese, motocycle taxis, 5-star fitness centers, smog and smelly klongs, Bangkok also has a wealth of high end private international hospitals eagerly waiting for ailing expats to shower in their hard earned foreign cash. Considering pretty much everywhere else in Thailand is devoid of competent doctors, if you have something that needs to get fixed, you pretty much need to come here to get it done. Let's take yours truly as an example. As many of you know, although my soul is built for diving, my ears are not. Much to be expected after my return to the underwater world, I was blessed with an ear infection a few weeks into my stay on K.Tao. Considering Koh Tao is an island almost completely dedicated to diving, you would expect the "doctor" on the island to be an expert in ear problems...but this is Koh Tao so why should I expect that to be the case! After 2.5 weeks of suffering and one run of self medicating with my usual course of antibiotic ear drops I still wasn't better. Keep in mind that ear infection = no diving so I was more than eager to get it taken care of. With no other option available, I was forced to pay the local Koh Tao clinic a visit and spend some time with "doctor death" as the local diving community has dubbed him. After looking in my ear (which had started to actually leak mysterious fluid out of it) the "doctor" informed me that he couldn't see any infection in there and would need to clear out my ear first so that he could see better (apparently pus dripping out of my ear canal wasn't enough proof that there was an infection in there). So he gave me some drops and told me to come back the next day.
Day 2 - I go back, he tries to clean in out and says "hmmm" I guess it wasn't dirty because I can't clean anything out. You have no infection in your ear. Nothing wrong, take an asprin.
Well thank you Doctor Death, apparently your reputation is about smack on. Clearly the fluid oozing out of my ear and the pain shooting all the way down to my throat through my teeth is not a sign that something is wrong in there. Silly me! Let's go for a dive!.... or not. Considering I was heading back up to Bangkok in a few days I decided to suck up the pain and get it properly looked at by someone who actually holds a medical degree not purchased on the Khao San road.
5 days later - I'm sitting in the Ear, Nose, Throat clinic at Bumrungrad hospital. One look in my ear and the doctor, between groans of displeasure and slight giggles of glee and the top notch infection he gets to play with informs me that my ear is a disaster zone and the doctor on Koh Tao is clearly a coconut monkey in disguise (that lab coat was SO convincing!). 30 minutes of rooting around in my ear canal, a full course of ebola killing grade antibiotics, a mega bottle of ear drops and a hundred dollar bill later and I'm released from the hospital with promise to appear one week later for a follow up
1 weeks later - Another panic attack inducing root around in my ear with a medical instrument that looks more like it belongs in an Iranian torture chamber than in a doctor's office, a second course of drops, another 100 dollar bill and yet another promise to appear 5 days later since the infection that won't die appears to have taken up permanent residence in my right ear canal.
So I'm looking forward to yet another 100 dollar bill at the end of the week and hopefully the nasties in my ear will be permanently vacated. Good riddance, they were terrible tenants.
So ladies and gentlemen, this is a clear example of the "you get what you pay for" approach to health care in Thailand. If you pay 4 dollars you get a doctor with a fake medical degree telling you that you are totally fine. If you pay 300$ you get super treatment and highly specialized care. Sometimes it's worth paying the big bucks I guess.
....and other times it's not.
Let's take example number two:
Post-transplant bloodwork - an epic adventure in public vs. private healthcare in Bangkok.
As part of my endless adventures in live organ donation, I have to get a barrage of bloodwork done every 3 to 6 months in order to make sure that my newly regrown (yet slightly deformed) liver is still working properly and that the other bits that they took out (liver lobe, a major artery, gall bladder, shwack of veins and other helpful things) aren't causing any unexpected issues in my inner workings. Since I was already at the hospital I decided to head over the the blood clinic to see how much it would cost to get everything done. You can imagine the look on my face when the lab nurse came back and told me it would cost over 300 US. Having just dropped 200 bucks on ear torture the past week, I decided that maybe I should seek out an alternative lab. Even the lab nurse at Bumrungrad hospital said "if you don't have insurance you should go somewhere else, go to a Thai public hospital" Now I usually would not even consider going to a Thai public hospital since I think I'm pretty safe in assuming their level of care and expertise pales in comparison to the big international hospitals but all I needed to get done was have my levels checked. They give me the printout and I mail it back to the transplant team in Canada where they can assess whether I'm healthy or not. Since I'm not leaving it up to the hospital to assess my health in any way, shape or form I decided it was ok. Under the expert recommendation of one my Thai former coworkers, I found myself at Rama hospital in Bangkok armed with a confused look, a blood requisition in English and a whole lot of patience.
I'm happy to report that 6 hours, 3 buildings, 4 offices, about 15 trips to the "information" kiosk, one helpful English speaking patient, 2 episodes of almost crying in frustration and 2 of almost screaming later and I was handed my results (in English to boot!). The grand total? 50 dollars. See, sometimes it's worth the hassel. As far as I can tell the results look legit. I'm faxing them off to the transplant team in Vancouver tomorrow so I guess we'll see if they make any sense to them. If not, then I guess 300 dollars it is but hey, it was worth a try and it was indeed an adventure worthy of Rice Paddy Royalty.
Cheers from how the rest of 'em live
J
P.S After posting this entry I have noticed that my "free" blogging site is subsidizing itself by inserting random hyperlinks to advertisers into my entries without my permission!! This sucks ass but there isn't anything I seem to be able to do about it at the moment. From this point on please ignore any highlighted hyperlinks unless I direct you to click on a link in the entry itself. Argh! How freaking annoying. Damn you Blogger!! Damn you!
I'm hoping during my month here to spend some time chronicling the eccentricities, quirks, joys and frustrations of "the big smog" since during my years of residence here I got a bit too wrapped up in marking highschool essays and exams and let my blogging fall by the wayside. It's nice to come back and see the city through the eyes of someone just passing through. Hopefully my slightly less hectic schedule this time around will allow me to give you all a little peak inside the mysteries of my on again, off again home.
 |
| Doctor Death, at your service |
Day 2 - I go back, he tries to clean in out and says "hmmm" I guess it wasn't dirty because I can't clean anything out. You have no infection in your ear. Nothing wrong, take an asprin.
Well thank you Doctor Death, apparently your reputation is about smack on. Clearly the fluid oozing out of my ear and the pain shooting all the way down to my throat through my teeth is not a sign that something is wrong in there. Silly me! Let's go for a dive!.... or not. Considering I was heading back up to Bangkok in a few days I decided to suck up the pain and get it properly looked at by someone who actually holds a medical degree not purchased on the Khao San road.
5 days later - I'm sitting in the Ear, Nose, Throat clinic at Bumrungrad hospital. One look in my ear and the doctor, between groans of displeasure and slight giggles of glee and the top notch infection he gets to play with informs me that my ear is a disaster zone and the doctor on Koh Tao is clearly a coconut monkey in disguise (that lab coat was SO convincing!). 30 minutes of rooting around in my ear canal, a full course of ebola killing grade antibiotics, a mega bottle of ear drops and a hundred dollar bill later and I'm released from the hospital with promise to appear one week later for a follow up1 weeks later - Another panic attack inducing root around in my ear with a medical instrument that looks more like it belongs in an Iranian torture chamber than in a doctor's office, a second course of drops, another 100 dollar bill and yet another promise to appear 5 days later since the infection that won't die appears to have taken up permanent residence in my right ear canal.
So I'm looking forward to yet another 100 dollar bill at the end of the week and hopefully the nasties in my ear will be permanently vacated. Good riddance, they were terrible tenants.
So ladies and gentlemen, this is a clear example of the "you get what you pay for" approach to health care in Thailand. If you pay 4 dollars you get a doctor with a fake medical degree telling you that you are totally fine. If you pay 300$ you get super treatment and highly specialized care. Sometimes it's worth paying the big bucks I guess.
....and other times it's not.
 |
| There's a reason doctors are so rich... at least the ones that work at Bumrungrad International |
Let's take example number two:
Post-transplant bloodwork - an epic adventure in public vs. private healthcare in Bangkok.
As part of my endless adventures in live organ donation, I have to get a barrage of bloodwork done every 3 to 6 months in order to make sure that my newly regrown (yet slightly deformed) liver is still working properly and that the other bits that they took out (liver lobe, a major artery, gall bladder, shwack of veins and other helpful things) aren't causing any unexpected issues in my inner workings. Since I was already at the hospital I decided to head over the the blood clinic to see how much it would cost to get everything done. You can imagine the look on my face when the lab nurse came back and told me it would cost over 300 US. Having just dropped 200 bucks on ear torture the past week, I decided that maybe I should seek out an alternative lab. Even the lab nurse at Bumrungrad hospital said "if you don't have insurance you should go somewhere else, go to a Thai public hospital" Now I usually would not even consider going to a Thai public hospital since I think I'm pretty safe in assuming their level of care and expertise pales in comparison to the big international hospitals but all I needed to get done was have my levels checked. They give me the printout and I mail it back to the transplant team in Canada where they can assess whether I'm healthy or not. Since I'm not leaving it up to the hospital to assess my health in any way, shape or form I decided it was ok. Under the expert recommendation of one my Thai former coworkers, I found myself at Rama hospital in Bangkok armed with a confused look, a blood requisition in English and a whole lot of patience.
I'm happy to report that 6 hours, 3 buildings, 4 offices, about 15 trips to the "information" kiosk, one helpful English speaking patient, 2 episodes of almost crying in frustration and 2 of almost screaming later and I was handed my results (in English to boot!). The grand total? 50 dollars. See, sometimes it's worth the hassel. As far as I can tell the results look legit. I'm faxing them off to the transplant team in Vancouver tomorrow so I guess we'll see if they make any sense to them. If not, then I guess 300 dollars it is but hey, it was worth a try and it was indeed an adventure worthy of Rice Paddy Royalty.
Cheers from how the rest of 'em live
J
P.S After posting this entry I have noticed that my "free" blogging site is subsidizing itself by inserting random hyperlinks to advertisers into my entries without my permission!! This sucks ass but there isn't anything I seem to be able to do about it at the moment. From this point on please ignore any highlighted hyperlinks unless I direct you to click on a link in the entry itself. Argh! How freaking annoying. Damn you Blogger!! Damn you!
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