Austrian Hospitals (Assignment #5, Personal Topic)

     As mentioned in my last blog post, I had to go to a hospital during my stay in Vienna. I had not been feeling the best for the past week, but by the time I decided I needed medicine all of the pharmacies had closed for the Easter Holiday. I planned on just grabbing so medicine at a pharmacy while in Vienna and just resting in my room, but that did not happen exactly as planned. Our first stop in Vienna was the Treasury. I could tell that I was getting a bad headache throughout the museum, but all of the sudden my body felt like it was on fire. I somehow managed to deliriously get through the last third of the museum and was lucky to find two of my friends at the exit. They escorted me out of the museum shop where we were fortunate to find one of our program directors, Martin. Martin came to the rescue and hailed a cab. I'm not for sure how things would have gone if we were unable to find Martin. He was the only one in our group that knew German. I can't really remember the taxi ride except for the last few minutes. You would think hospital emergency rooms would be easy to find anywhere, right? Wrong. The taxi drive took a sequence of turns to navigate through a windy ramp up to the emergency room access of the hospital. Where he let us off at didn't even looked like a hospital out of a horror film. EMTs, nurses, and other hospital employees were by the entrance smoking and playing on their phones, something you would never see in the States. They instructed us to go down this long hallway find the emergency room and after what seemed like forever we finally found it. 

My rough floor plan of the ER

     The emergency room was basically one large open space. This space included a reception area, a nurses station, ten hospital beds and a small waiting area. We waited in line at reception only to be told to see the nurse first. The nurses station was int the back right corner of the room, sectioned off only by a thin curtain. Here my vitals were taken along with my symptoms. I was running a 104°F with a blood pressure of 177/103 which were definitely a cause for concern. The strangest part was that a nurse sent me down a windy hall with nothing but a yellow line on the floor to guide my incoherent self to the restroom and back to collect a urine sample. I walked through the crowded waiting room with a Styrofoam cup in hand and made my yellow line journey with the help of the wall for support. I can't say that that was the safest or most ideal way to do this, but it is something I will never forget. After I returned to the nurses station, I was handed two slips of paper and instructed to go to the reception desk.

     At the reception desk, I filled out one short paper on my personal information. It only asked for my name, DOB, address, and insurance- a nice change from the stack of papers one must fill out at an American hospital. I had to pay a 150 euro fee for using the hospital. This fee included two urine tests, two blood tests, an ultrasound, and three or four IV's of medication. Not too bad for a hospital that does not accept private insurance. I then had to go down another hallway and sit outside of a door to see a specialist. Once my name was called, I followed a doctor into a room filled with medicine and machines. I laid on the bed while a doctor and two nurses communicated in German for most of the time. Occasionally, the doctor would tell me to do something in English before continuing on in German. I was completely lost in what they were doing. The only thing I could do was have faith in them. I was probably in this room for an hour and half to two hours. Here I had an ultrasound done, blood tests done, and two IVs. I was told that my final blood test would determine if I could leave or if I had to stay. The doctor believed that with my vitals and temperature that I would be forced to stay overnight. Eventually, I was allowed out of the room and instructed to lay on one of the ten bed in the open room. Here I was given two more IV bags of medication while I waited for my final blood test result. The IV was inconveniently placed in my arm rather than my hand. This meant I had to hold my arm straight for over three hours.

     While laying on my hospital bed, I could see all of the other people laying on the beds and everyone in the emergency room, something very different than any of my previous emergency room visits. Once my IVs were finished, I was shooed off of my bed by a German speaking nurse. With a needle still stuck in my arm, I sat in a chair in the waiting room until my blood test results were finished. Ill individuals were pushed around the waiting room  on beds and in wheelchairs,

something I had never experienced before. I'm sure that my name was called on the intercom a few times, but it was all in German so we could not understand it. Luckily, my doctor came and found me. He took me into the same room as earlier and told me some of the best news I had ever received: I could leave the hospital! I was written a German prescription and sent on my happy way. Martin called us a taxi and away we went. I have never been so relived in my life. The thought of staying at the horror film-esque hospital for an entire night was one of the most terrifying things I could think of. The only thing that went through my mind were images from different horror films I had seen. I was convinced that if I stayed over night my experience would be the same as in the movies. (Weird I know, but I wasn't completely with it after all of the medication I had received.) 

     We took a cab back to our hostel where we left Martin. Keyli, Jessica, and I grabbed some well deserved KFC and ice cream. After all, we deserved it! The next day Martin took me to a pharmacy and communicated with the pharmacist to get my medication. My medications were only 30 euro without insurance bringing my grand total to 180 euro or $193.29. It is amazing how cost friendly European health care is. In Nebraska I am sure that my emergency room visit and medication would have cost that if not more with insurance. Martin shared with me that healthcare in the Czech Republic is free except for dental work. I can not even imagine having a healthcare system like that in the United States. It was 

     I am so thankful for my friends and Martin. Keyli and Jessica gave up an afternoon in Vienna to keep me company during my emergency room stay and if it weren't for Martin we probably would have never made it to a hospital. Things could have been much much worse and I am so fortunate to be 100% back to normal.