Hospitals suck

[Datruth]

*Matt tilts his head to hear what the small robed man on his shoulder is saying and smiles and nods.*

We got a little bored with the ranting, but did read Zanzibar's. One thing I have to point out for amusement's sake is:

And despite the facts, public healthcare is actually far more efficient than privately owned health care. 

Heh heh.

What I meant was that even though private business is supposed to care about maximizing fiscal proffits, public healthcare institutions are actually more effecient monetarily.  The fact is that public healthcare is supposed to care about service more than money, and despite that fact, they are still more efficient.

Agreed, If you don't believe him, Come break your leg in Southern California.

You'll probably get Liver Medication by accident. 

[Gharan]

At least you have got a hospital Datruth ours is shutting and the nearest is miles away 

[Idoru]

Means you have less chance of contracting MRSA now Gharan 

[Parallo]

The nearest hosital to where I live is thirty miles away. It lacks most facilities so people needing specialist treatment have to travel to other counties. Cancer patients have to travel to the other end of the country for their regular treatment. There is major outcry at the moment. All sorts of movements and rallies have been organised.

[Kiraki]

Oh! Pick me! Pick me! I want to rant too please.   

Over here it is almost better to treat yourself than go to a public hospital.  It is common practice to send relatives you dislike to public hospitals…  I have been to hospitals way too many times and it is not a pleasant place to go even when it’s a private one.   

Private ones are almost just as bad as public ones, but at least you return from them alive.  Firstly if you do not have proof that you belong to medical aid they just send you away to the closes public hospital and even with proof still you have to fill in your medical aid details and all kinds of other forms.
This happened to me when I took a young horse for a walk and we rounded a corner almost bumping into some giraffes.  The poor horse had never seen a giraffe before in his life and went crazy.  To make a long story short I ended up being tossed straight through a thorn tree scraping half my face off on one of the branches and hitting the next branch head first.  Then I plopped down through the branches hitting the ground, lucky not on my head (Again).
When we got to the hospital I had to wait in line for over half an hour.  None of the people in front of me had any serious injuries but no one really seemed to care.
Actually one person did… at some point the janitor passed me a bucket so I could stop bleeding all over the floor.
It being a hot day and 30 degrees out was not helping either and by the time I got the front I was just about passing out. 

I went to a public hospital once, and never again after that.  I almost died...  I had broken my hand and they had to replace some of the bones in my finger with bone they had cut from my ankle.  I only had a wrapped up hand and foot but they wanted to keep me overnight for a few days to make sure my hand stabilizes or something.  I stayed there for two days after the operation, in that time (Outside visiting hours) I had more company in the form of rats and other little creatures running about, and then I had from the hospital staff them selves.  I saw a nurse twice a day, once walking past my ward then again when she left for home.  Naturally my call button was broken and so was everyone else’s.  On the second morning a nurse actually came in to check on me. I tried to talk to her and ask why no staff is about but she simply shrugged and ignored me.  (Having 11 official languages is such an easy excuse to be rude). I over heard her talk to the normal nurse that passes in the mornings so I knew she could understand me. She stated that bandages needed changing and left to fetch some. Guess who never came back…   
By that afternoon I had had enough.  I colleted my things, phoned home then got out of bed and hopped down the hall.  I was on the third floor, there was a lift but I gave one look at the dust that had gathered on the button and promptly turned around hopping down the wheel chair ramp instead. No one even questioned me until I started hoping past the reception desk.  The receptionist was saying something about needing to sign some forms or letting the doctor know I am leaving but I had no interest in what she was saying as I was still hopped and more focused on keeping my balance.  I hopped outside and never went back.   
I had to go for physiotherapy for both my hand and foot.  Firstly they had left the clamp down too long and I had gotten ‘drop foot’ and secondly, the doctor had cut across the part of my finger where it had the densest collection of nerves.  I fully recovered but my physiotherapist said later that it was amazing that I could even use my finger at all.

Most of my other operations and injuries didn’t go very smoothly either so I am not a great fan of hospitals either way. 

[zanzibar]

Kiraki, those are both nightmares of a story.  Here in Canada, the first thing they do is triage.  Emergency cases are rushed to the front.

[LARAGORN]

In most cases you are right Zanzi, five minutes after walking in the hospital I had a team of nurses and technitions swarming around me. Things are not always this way however, I have went through hell and back with my ex-wife in dealing with doctors and hospitals. 17 surguries in 8 years is totally pathetic. My step son had a similar experience as mentioned here. The doctor had sent him home because he didnt have a fever, even though his white blood level was triple the norm. It was almost three months later, when my step son said he couldnt take the pain any more, that we went back to the hospital. Luckily it was a different doctor, and he imidiatly took him to surgery. A ruptured apendix with gangerous bile throughout the abdomen, not a happy time for a 12 year old. Three days later my ex-wife was rushed to surgery with 2 ruptured cysts and a ruptured tubal pregnacy, she had lost over 3 liters of blood with internal bleeding. she had been examined 1 week prior and was told nothing was wrong.

About 20 years ago the major hospital in my city was rated in the top 5 of Canadian hospitals, they had cutting edge doctors preforming cutting edge research and surgery. That is about the time the government started to lean toward private health care, and the cut backs started. There were 3 hospitals, now we are down to one. It is funny how the one hospital is costing almost as much as the 3 used to. Everything is contracted out, instead of having their own janitorial staff, it goes to the highest bidder( yes i said highest, the lower bids were ignored) instead of having their own food services, it is shiped 900Km from the highest bidder. All our doctors and nurses are romanced by the states, with new cars and houses, and trust funds for their kids. Canada can't compete with the money they are offered, so they go State side. We are left with over worked and under qualified doctors and nurses. Even imagrant doctors that have been fully trained elswhere have to take the entire medical training over, not just a year or two, or a competancie exam, the entire schooling proccess. My parents doctor just retired and now there are 11000 people without a family doctor, yes eleven thousand people had the same doctor.
It is a scary situation.

[oobilytoob]

* oobilytoob takes a BIG breath

4 years ago, i had pains in my abdomen, vomitting and nausia for days on end. I ended up in hospital and after about a week of scans and tests i was MISdiagnosed with stomache migranes, pretty much a more sophisticated word for random gut pains.

3 years later [As in last year] I found myself getting serious stomache pains again, randomly out of no where, i used to get them intermittently for short bursts and thought nothing of it. Yet now it lasted longer and was more severe. short version until i got to hospital; 5 weeks of agonising pain, seeing as pain killers do nearly nothing for me [when in hopsital i was on 80mls of morphine, 8mls of pethadine[stronger than morphine, apparently strongest tere is], oxycodone [panadol on steriods] and tramadol, all at the same time, and i was still consious of my pain] and in this time all i had was regular pain tablets. It took the 5 weeks of running between 3 incompetent GP's all giving me wrong diagnoses, from.. being full of crap [what he said XD], to having irritable bowel Syndrome. Eventually one [my current GP] organised a ultrasound, and they saw an abnormality in my bowels, and then i was sent to hospital to find out if it was what they thought. [3 days before my birthday, i ate dry crackers while the rest of my family ate my favorite type of mud cake in front of me ] to summarise my whole hospital experience, i ended up spending near on 9 weeks in the hospital, I was diagnosed with Crohns disease[ The end of my small bowel was inflamed and nothing could pass through]I had a crap load of tests [CAT scans, MRI, Colonoscopy, endoscopy, blood tests, pretty much every investaggatory test there is] and put of every medication for it, steriods, left for 5 days and came back with a perriferated bowel, eventually they put me into surgery, i had a bowel ressection and 50cm of the end of my small and 10 cm of the start of my large intestines was removed and then for 3 months i had a illiostomy bag.. fun [these are the reasons for the scars if any of you have seen them] after that i went back to hospital for about another two weeks and then until the wound was healed i had appointments filling it with gausse. But, now i am better and have been for over six months, doing better than most after this type of thing and actually fitter and stronger then what i was before it all happened. learning to walk again and muscle deprivation is a tough cookie . One thing i learnt, The staff over here, especially the nurses are awsome, caring, kind, talketive and.. most are hot too ^^.

So yeah, it irritates me when there are medical ads on TV with people saying," i spent 4 days in hopsital"

But at least i got a couple cool scars out of it and im all good now.

[ Edited for language. --Karyuu ]

[LARAGORN]

I'm happy for you oobilytoob, I know what it is like to have pain on a daily basis. I hope the sergury was an end for your problems.

I had a childhood disease which deformed both my hip joints, now there is no cartalidge and no fluid sack, both hips are just bone on bone, and arthritis has set it on both. So pain is no stranger to me, I take 40 mg of oxycontin 3 times a day and 3600 mg of anti-inflamitory medication a day, but this only dulls the pain slightly. All the doctors say I am still to young for hip replacement (they have said that for 20 years) and one was willing to do it until she saw the x-rays. There is to little of the socket left, and she is not confident enough to rebuild my pelvis. Its a no win situation.

[Sharakaz]

I've only had few problems which needed hospital treatment. The worst one was a chronic infection of my ear that threatened to infect my facial nerve and paralyze my left half of the face.

Eventually after one year of stinking fluids comming out of my ear and 14 ear-specialist appointments I was sent to the hospital where they diagnosed me with the correct disease, Cholesteatoma, and i was signed up for surgery as soon as possible. That just happened to be 6 months later  The surgery went fine but I caught a light infection while recovering

I found out that the ear department of the public hospital here has two doctors. Two doctors!
All in all my impression is that the danish doctors are very talented, there are just not enough and our government won't give them the money they need..