My hospital visit while on vacation in Turkey.

[Guest guest]

This happened a few weeks ago but I did

not have the time yet to tell the forum about this because of our vacation in

the US

the last few weeks.

My company decided to take all employees

for a long weekend to Turkey.

My left shoulder has a tendency to dislocate and I managed to dislocate it

while swimming in the hotel pool. The hotel doctor did not want to return it to

place himself so he sent me to the hospital. I am sure that this hospital is

primarily a tourist hospital, because it is a very modern and state of the art

place. I am originally from Holland but live in Israel now. I

created quite some confused looks with my Israeli insurance policy and my Dutch

passport. Luckily the person that does the paperwork spoke German (which is

kind of close to Dutch and I learned German in school) so I was able to explain

what happened and we were able to fill out the paperwork.

The doctor came and said in very poor English

that I would need to be under general anesthesia and that he would take care of

me. I tried to explain to him that I have PSC and that I wanted the anesthetist

to be aware of that. He did not know what PSC was and I tried to explain to no

avail. I then remembered I brought a little booklet from Israel with

handy terms in Turkish. I looked up the word for " liver " and showed

it to him, I then looked up the word for " bad " and showed it to him. He

then went to the German speaking clerk and he asked me in German if I meant

that my liver is bad. I told him that was the case and the doctor drew blood to

check the numbers and left to prepare everything. When the anesthetist arrived

she spoke the queens English since she learned medicine in England. When I

told her that I had PSC she did not recall hearing from the condition, but she

knew what " primary " was, she knew what " sclerosing " was and

she knew what " cholangitis " was. It then became clear that the doctor

I spoke to before did not convey anything about my bad liver to her and she

threw out all the stuff she prepared and opened for the anesthesia. She then

brought me under using a face mask, I have no clue what she used, but

everything went fine from then on.

I woke up about an hour later without

problems and after paying the $2000 bill I went back to my hotel to continue

the long weekend. My travel insurance already paid up, except for $50.

I try not to rely on doctors talking to

one another, that is why I always try to understand what is being done so I can

make sure that everyone knows what is going on (including the doctors). This

time it paid off. I still have to say that I was very impressed with the

facility and the people (except for that one doctor).

Chaim Boermeester, Israel