One of the reasons I have not blogged the whole month of July is that I was too caught up with my mother’s condition.
Last July 2, she underwent an excision biopsy for a bleeding cyst in her right breast. Her doctor for her diabetes referred her to this general surgeon in a nearby hospital (we can call it Hospital A) and the recommendation was to undergo the procedure. I went straight to the hospital from work, planning to go on emergency leave the next few days. So there we were, waiting in the emergency room at 11 PM, waiting for the general surgeon to come. Apparently the surgeon only comes to the hospital at night. And lo and behold, he was a family member of the hospital owners so that explained why he said the operation can’t be done in this other hospital I suggested. The operation ended after more than 3 hours. The cyst was, get this, placed in a mineral water bottle and given to me. Why? So I can be the one to request the histopath test from the laboratory. Given the precedents that night, it was no surprise to me when I found that their 24-hour laboratory was closed, and from the window I can see the medical technologists sleeping in benches. I had to knock them all awake, only to be told b them to “hold on” to the sample until the next morning, because they will outsource the test to another laboratory anyway. Great right? To add insult to injury, I get an attitude from a midwife who’s also in charge of the hospital room reservations, implying that I don’t look like someone who can pay for a special private room. And from then on I did not get that much sleep. Why? Because everything that had to be used on my mother from then on had to be bought from the hospital’s pharmacy (What a surprise huh?). The nurses would always barge in to ask that I buy this and buy that, giving me a cut piece of scratch paper, which I will then bring to the pharmacy, pay the amount, get no official receipt (illegal in most parts of the Philippines by the way), get the goods and bring them to the nurse station. Several nurses on night shift, as expected, are of course asleep. The agony continued as we stayed there for one more day due to my mother’s high blood sugar levels. At the end of it (July 4), I had to pay more than sixteen grand in hospital bills, and again get no official receipt. Just a stamp on the hospital bill that says “PAID”. This whole experience reminded me why I hate small private hospitals. Aside from being robbing you blind for little value rendered and not-so-sophisticated facilities, the personnel have little service-orientation. I was very thankful to be out of there, even if I wasn’t the patient. The only silver lining from the whole experience was that my mother mentioned to me that one of the nurses had a crush on me, with my haggard, unshaven looks.
In contrast, I enjoyed her confinement to this other hospital (we can it Hospital M). It was one of the biggest hospitals in Manila and I was confined there once. I took my mother there to see an oncologist, because the initial findings from the outsourcing laboratory of hospital A diagnosed her with Invasive Ductal Carcinoma, a common form of breast cancer. I already went there the day before to get a list of oncologists and their schedules. I got all of it from the information desk person, who was very accommodating and very knowledgeable. The hospital had a food court, and a very good queuing system for laboratory tests. Payments are also supported by official receipts too. The oncologist had his own clinic (as opposed to Dr. Fly-By-Night in Hospital A who conducts consultations in the emergency room), and was very surprised when we told him that my mother didn’t undergo a mammography and breast ultrasound prior to the excision biopsy. Then we had my mother admitted for her modified radical mastectomy (MRM) to remove her right breast. It only took us 3 days. Now she's going to be scheduled on chemo. By now you can already probably feel my irritation towards Hospital A. Anyway, I managed to convince my mother not to go to that surgeon anymore and so we’ll stick with Hospital M, whatever procedures are needed to move forward. We still have to retrieve the breast slides from Hospital A for re-analysis in Hospital M as recommended by our oncologist, though.
Anyway, the point of this post is to provide a contrast between two private hospitals and the vast difference between the two in terms of all the aspects of being a medical institution. I feel for those people who cannot afford hospitals like Hospital M, and have to make do with the nightmares that conditions in Hospital A bring.
If only service-orientation can be built in all medical institutions, private or public, then being infirm in this godforsaken country wouldn’t be that big a burden.
This country is no place for the infirm, and yet there are a lot of sick people which the private enterprises feed on, whether they have the capacity to give the right quality of service or not. Sigh.
Having money isn’t everything. But it sure as hell helps a lot.
