After our scorpion incident on one of our first nights in San Miguel, I realized that I should know exactly how to get to a good hospital in the area...we've had our share of emergency room visits as I'm sure all of you with kids have had! I'm glad I did since we needed to go there today for Alex. He had been having a high fever for a few days (don't know how high since I have no thermometer but he was burning up from head to toe) and then he started holding his tummy and moaning. This went on for a while and finally weecided that this was NOT normal and that he really needed to be seen by a doctor.
Luckily, it is quite easy to find taxis here and we got ourselves to Hospital de la Fe which is less than 10 minutes from our house. Alex was quite scared and poor thing started breaking down in the taxi. It is scary enough to go to a hospital in your own country let alone one in a foreign country. Of course, my Spanish is not great and Alex knows that too. Luckily, we were very pleasantly surprised. We were greeted at the door and then taken immediately in for a consultation with the doctor. No paperwork. No lines. No bureaucracy. Truly within 1 minute we were meeting with a doctor whose sole responsibility is to immediately assess all the patients who walk through the door. You know how you can wait for hours in emergency rooms at home? We could learn something from this Mexican hospital. The doctor did a check up and then ordered some blood tests. Truly within 30 minutes he had Alex's blood drawn, he was seen by a specialist to be sure he didn't have appendicitis, and was given fruit and juice to eat while we waited for the results of the blood work (yes, done right there and completed within 30 minutes). It turned out poor Alex had strep throat, an eye infection, the start of a bladder infection, and a swollen colon. So no wonder the poor kids was in such pain! We left with prescriptions for antibiotics and a muscle relaxer for the colon. Total bill for 2 doctors, blood work, and emergency services: about $110 US dollars.
Total cost for antibiotics filled at a pharmacy with no health insurance: about $10.00.
Made me really see how broken our health care system really is. Costs of drugs is so cheap here since no Mexican could afford it otherwise. However, they are the same drugs that we have and we pay about 8 times as much!!! No wonder more and more older Americans are moving to Mexico for excellent, good healthcare.
Alex and I were home within 1.5 hours of going to the hospital. We probably wouldn't have been even seen by that point in our Emergency room at home!
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