Unexpected Medical Tourism

 One thing that I really, really wanted to avoid while we are living in Poland is having to seek medical attention. When Natalie broke her finger we splinted it ourselves and she is good as new. When we had food poisoning back in December we stayed home and waited it out. But Wednesday was a whole new story.

Myles left early Wednesday morning to catch a flight. He went to The Hague in Holland for a conference. He will be back on Sunday. The morning was going along well. We were getting school stuff done. At about 12:30 the kids had eaten lunch and were working on their assignments. I was in the downstairs bedroom on the computer. All of the sudden my tongue felt weird. I ignored it for a while and it just got worse. The entire right side (and the right side only) was swollen. Hmm, nothing like this has ever happened before. I hadn't eaten anything unusual all morning and I hadn't eaten anything at all for about four hours prior. So I wait a bit longer to see if it resolves itself. It does not and then my throat starts to feel weird. I could breathe, but not like normal. This was definitely an allergic reaction to something.

So I send Abbie over to our neighbor's house. Basia was trained as a nurse when she was in school. She is not practicing anymore but she knows what she is doing way more than I do. They came right over and I asked them to tell me a doctor to go to. They insisted we go to the hospital. I would have done the exact same thing in their shoes, but I really didn't want to visit the hospital. So off to the hospital we go. It is very close to where we live, within a mile.

Basia drove and Karol went along to help translate. He warned me that we could be there quite a while. The kids were home by themselves, but they were fine. Also, they had Mariusz and Anita home in case they needed something. We got there and checked in with the receptionist. They required an ID so I showed my passport. Then since there was concern with breathing I was ushered right in. First they asked if I was allergic to any medications (yes, penicillin) and took my blood pressure. Then immediately after that they started an IV line. In the US you cannot even walk into a doctor's office with a hangnail without them weighing you first. They did not do that here and I did not see a scale anywhere. The nurse who was assigned to me spoke some English. She was very nice. She came up to me with a syringe of something and told me to come with her. I followed and asked her what was in the syringe. She said it was benedryl (or something like it). I start to pull up my sleeve and she says in a very sweet and professional voice, "No, in the ass." Oh.

Ok, so then she points to a chair for me to sit in in the middle of a big room. She attaches some IV drip into my arm. I ask her what it is and she did not exactly know how to translate. I think I got out of her that it was hydrocortisone, or something like it. So I sat in the emergency ward right in the middle of the big room. There was a guy next to me in the chairs also hooked up to some IV. There were 12 beds along the walls, every one of them taken by patients in various states of need. There are small curtains that could potentially provide some privacy, but few of them were in use. It took about 20 minutes for my IV to get finished.

Once it was done, they disconnected me from the IV and told me to follow a young man to where the larynologist (ENT doctor) is. His office was located on the 6th floor so up we go in the elevator. The doctor met us in the hallway up there and he also spoke a little English. So he listens to my story. He then pulls out one of those little mirror things that dentists use. He pulls a lighter from his pocket and lights it. He holds the flame to the mirror thing and then wipes it off with some cotton gauze. Seriously. He then uses it to look at my throat and says that it is looking ok now. I could definitely tell a difference in my throat before I went upstairs.

After about five minutes with the ENT, the young man takes me back down to the emergency ward. I sit there for about 10 more minutes waiting for a doctor to come so I could leave. Finally, I get the ok to go. They gave me a paper with instructions in Polish. I met Basia and Karol who were hanging out in the waiting area. We went to the receptionist and paid the bill. It came to 256,00 PLN (about $85). I paid in cash. The receptionist took my home address in the US and said she would send a bill/receipt there so I could get reimbursement from my insurance at home. If it ever makes it home I will keep it and the Polish instructions as souvenirs. For 85 bucks I'm pretty sure the hassle with our insurance company at home is going to be way more than it is worth, so I'm not going to even bother with it. The whole hospital visit took about an hour and a half. We never did figure out what caused this reaction. I don't really have an allergy tendency, so who knows...?

I was very tired for the rest of they day and ended up with a nasty headache in the evening. But overall I am just fine. The kids and I were in contact with Myles during various points of this experience so he knew what was going on. We decided pretty quickly that it was fine for him to stay where he was and he did not need to come home. We are so very lucky that the kindest Poles in the country are our neighbors. I told Karol how much I appreciated all that they did for us today. He just said that people should help people. Of course they should. But the fact is that lots of times they don't. I hope that someday I will be able to return some of the kindness they have shown to us (for our entire stay here). I would love it if they could come to the US sometime to visit us, and we will take them under our wing in a country that is unfamiliar to them.