Hospitals

Several weeks ago, one of the retired missionaries here had a mild stroke. She has lived here for 17 years and Mexico is her home, even though she has no family here nor work to do. We at the Bible School are her family and take care of her needs from driving to errands. When she had the stroke I took her to the ER at the University Hospital in Monterrey, the same ER I had taken Greg to last August after a disastrous mountain-trekking trip on the hottest day of the year... but I digress! This ER is like watching the television show! The doctors are running around like crazy, there are bloody people all over the place, and all the nurses and docs are strikingly beautiful or handsome (but still no George Clooneys, dangit!) I spent the night in the waiting room, but wasn't smart enough to bring blankets and pillows like the other family members who camped out all over the floors and used sets of chairs for makeshift beds. At 10 pm and 4 am I was allowed into the back to visit my friend, who was situated between a really old man who was calling out for his mother and a young man who was in a coma from falling off of a ladder while drunk. The interns sat patiently by his bedside squeezing the balloon to breathe for him.

Today we had to return and go through the whole rigaramol of visiting the doc for her checkup and seeing sick people all over the place. The hospital isn't that much different from a public hospital in the US, only MUCH MUCH cheaper. She was in the hospital for five days, had two MRI's, a CT scan, and all kinds of tests. Her bill for everything?? Less than $2000 US. Incredible, huh? Makes you wonder how much insurance and private health care is really costing us Americans in the US of A.