Hi Phil,
Glad you made it out okay, and good for your girlfriend for pitching a fit on your behalf. Give her a high five for me! I've been that girlfriend. My guy got a routine knee surgery that was supposed to take about an hour. Three and a half hours after they wheeled him away, I stormed down the hall and into the shared post-op recovery room to demand where the hell he was, because if he'd died on the table, I needed to be able to tell his parents who were calling me from Colombia every 10 minutes. Well it turns out they'd forgotten to run some blood tests on him, and so stuck him in a room for an hour or so to wait before the surgery. Of course they didn't tell me this before, when I'd asked calmly about how much longer it would be. No no, like always, one has to make a scene to get anyone to pay attention.
It was this, and my swine flu experience (left alone losing consciousness until a receptionist noticed me at Swiss Medical because the doctor who said he'd show me where the testing place was forgot about me), and all of the bs I put up with to get diagnosed with a congenital heart condition that made me decide I would much rather get my heart surgery in the U.S. That and they were waiting on some "new technology" to update the procedure I needed, that of course the most of the rest of the world already has because they can afford the machines and tools they need.
Once they actually get to the cutting and diagnosing, the medical care is quite good in BA. But it's all the other stuff that really got to me in the end. The same apathy and general lack of organization and competence that can be really dangerous in a HOSPITAL of all places. Of course, you didn't have the option of waiting, so I'm glad they were able to get their shit together and take care of you once your appendix exploded. The biological equivalent of pitching a fit, I suppose.
