Thanks for all the good wishes guys!
I'd like to follow up with a bit of an update about the Hospital since the last post seems to have come off a bit vitrolic, probably due to the odd combination of general anesthesia wearing off and more normal IV anesthesia kicking in.
I arrived at the hospital at 5 pm ish yesterday, the admitting doctor in the ER identified the locale of my pain as possibly indicative of appendicitis. I spent almost an hour waiting in the first of the 3 waiting rooms, I don't think it was triage because the people getting to go in front of me seemed to be in relatively good condition. I was charged 340 pesos for the consult.
After the consult in which I got poked several times in a room by a doctor she ordered some blood tests, a sonogram, and an IV. At this time I was still in some of the worst pain of my life, but they made me walk back out to the ER reception to pay the 780 odd pesos for the tests.
Aside from appearing kind of unsanitary, the blood test went well and was relatively quick to come. I then waited in extreme pain for almost 3 hours for the sonogram, which basically said maybe, when asked why they didn't give me a cat scan, they said the machine was broken!
All of this didn't inspire much confidence but nobody would tell me the results of my tests, I kept asking while sitting in my seat with my IV and people kept telling me, "don't worry, someone will help you soon." At around 10:15, 5 hours after admittance, I felt a strange sensation in my lower right side and suddenly 80% of the pain went away. From what I had read up on the internet, this was probably my appendix going pop. I told this to the lady in the waiting room and got the same "don't worry" response, 20 minutes later though, I had a bed in another sort of waiting room, one with peeling paint on the walls, 6 other beds only curtains away and manchas-no-identificables on said walls and curtains.
In this waiting room, I was given an EKG with a machine that had me convinced I must have been already convicted of a capital crime, and had a team of doctors come in and poke me, ask me about my medical history, and basically look at each other and say "I concur", thus diagnosing me with appendicitis. 2 hours pass, no nurse comes by, not once, to check on me! I push myself out of the room on my bed dragging my IV with me in order to get some attention and ask that they please reconnect the saline drip I had that the had been disconnected. They did, and half way pushed me back into my room, when another doctor came, poked me in the same spots as the previous docs, and then asks the EXACT SAME QUESTIONS about my medical history that I'd already been asked 3-4 times, one would think someone would have been taking notes.
Around 12:40 they finally take me to surgery (after getting a 25,000 peso deposit on my CC) by way of wheeling me outside on to a side street (or driveway) and through another set of doors that reminded me of a set of a horror flick. We arrive at a bank of elevetors and get in, go down to our floor, and the doors dont open. The guy pushing me presses the intercom, we go back up to where we started and take a different elevator, the half broken lights and loosly hanging ceiling panels only contributing to the horror movie vibe. This is where the negative story mostly ends.
Down on the OR floor, it looks like an old bathroom, or maybe a morgue, but at least it looks like, by far, the cleanest part of the hospital. I meet the surgery team, they're all friendly and appear confident. The anesthesiologist puts a mask over my face and asks me how much I weigh, I respond and my last conscious thought is "Shouldn't she have already known that?"
2:30 hours later, I wake up being wheeled into my room, one I only got I suspect because I'm paying cash and my girlfriend pitched a fit on my behalf. The doctors have managed to everything laparoscopically despite a few complications, this means I won't have the traditional ugly appendicitis scar, rather a few tiny ones. I definitely applaud their skill, especially considering the time of day that they were working. 5 thumbs up. The room is nice, modern, and if the AC was better would be all I could ask for. Since I've been awake the nurses have been attentive, the room has been cleaned and the doc has been by 2x. It feels like a different hospital.
Bottom line though, I will be in the hospital until all the infections are cleared up could be until tomorrow, could be a few weeks. If I had been attended more quickly before it burst, I may have been writing this message on my way home (although thats not for sure). The main problem was that, through out the whole first half of this ordeal, I kept running into what expats sometimes call the Argentine attitude; it's the reason the same number of people with the same number of bags take longer to check out in Arg supermarkets vs American ones, its why in the states you smile as you tip 20% while here you seethe as you try and make a point leaving .05 centavos. When its your health on the line, this "service attitude" transitions from being slightly annoying to downright maddening and scary.
Thanks again for all the kind remarks. French jurist, enjoy that wine and some good food for me, right now I'm enjoying food and drink through a tube in my arm.
