Next Stop

On Christmas eve, we were spending our time at the hospital. The queue was not long as the emergency department was very organized. When we arrived there, apparently we were standing in line at the wrong counter. Patients with referral letters were sent direct to a room with an attending nurse and not at the registering counter.

Here like in many Western countries nurses play a major role in the front line of a hospital. They will be talking to you first, coding you and categorizing which specialist area you ought to be waiting at. It was fast and smooth, no hustle at all.

The surgery area where I was asked to wait had 3 patients including me. We waited for approximately 15 minutes before the surgical doctor’s arrival. There were no nurses in waiting with the doctor; the nurse will be called upon only when she/he was required. The doctor himself will call each patient and accompany us back to his room. It was more personal.

The doctor I met today was one of the best doctors that I have met in a very long time. He was just adorable, putting me at ease immediately, throwing questions at me like as though we were long lost friends, and putting forward the probability without scaring the shit out of me. When he withdraw my blood, he knew instantly that he could not get any from the veins in my arm, he does not even bother to try putting the needle there, instead he went direct to the back of my hand, with a butterfly needle he drew 3 tubes of blood with me feeling nothing at all. It was really a first experience for me to have my blood taken without pain or bruise or blue black mark afterwards.

To cut the story short, I am referred to a surgical surgeon in a private clinic, as the procedure that was required for me to do was immediate, the waiting time in the hospital for these procedures is long. So, therefore.

It is still the holiday celebration here, so I am yet to be in touch with the new surgeon. He is formally based at the well known Rudolfinerhaus private hospital here. However, the location is too far from us, I hope we will be meeting at a closer address.

12.28.2009……………………… waiting continues.