August 7, 2024
Hospitals
Cycle tourists are people passing through lands and societies that are beyond their normal ones. And because they are deliberately going extra slow (even if faster than walkers) and deliberately making themselves more vulnerable to all kinds of risks than normal, and open to all sorts of experiences, Cycleblaze blogs end up covering almost every topic imaginable. I mean, one time we even covered particle physics, just because we happened to cycle past the giant accelerator at CERN.
Today's topic is Hospitals, and tomorrow's will touch on Trains. These are huge areas of concern to cycle tourists, though both deal with cases where the cyclist has somehow been forced off the bike. I guess the previous page, on Airlines, is in this category as well.
We have been fortunate by not having had too much experience with hospitals through life. At least that is not much experience as clients. Dodie did spend her career working inside the darn things. Our main cycling experiences with hospitals were in Florida, (when hit by a truck), Netherlands, (hit by a car), Mexico, (hit head on road), and Netherlands again (bad food in a national park). And now, we are living in one for a week, before flying out on Saturday.
Since our cycling career is only really a decade or so old, the hospitals we have visited were all much different from the dingy, crowded places with equipment clogging the corridors and restrictive visiting hours, that we remember from the old days. No doubt it's because we have stuck to the more economically developed parts of the world, but we have experienced only bright, airy, and quiet places, often providing space that includes a bed and even food for visitors, and boasting quite competent staff and tons of diagnostic equipment.
There have been differences, of course. On the plus side there was the hospital in Netherlands with the Eis Cafe in the courtyard, and the rooms with a view of the green inner courtyard. In Mexico (Merida) there was instant access to the specialists, and a medical imaging section that belted out reams of pictures of poor Dodie's head, including a souvenir CD of the whole thing. The bottom rung is occupied by the Florida hospital that stashed me in a corridor for my four hour stay, had an orthopedic specialist that said the job was too tough for him, but still managed t0 create a $10,000 invoice, and an overall experience that came in at $25,000, which was a little more than $6,000 per hour. I only got finally fixed on returning to Canada, and where most services at least appear on the surface to be free to all citizens.
Now, sitting on a visitor bed in Victoria's Jubilee Hospital, I can look out the picture window at green Mount Douglas, or down to the parkade, where our eGolf is enjoying the sun atop the spacious and not too expensive per day structure. And yes, there is a coffee shop, called the Good Earth, though admittedly it is not an eis cafe, and there is an oriental style meditation garden, with waterfall. Seeing that Dodie appears to be living here, they have begun to bring her food, in what they call "companion trays". This service, and all the other expert staff, diagnostics, drugs, supplies, and space are at no apparent charge. It makes me proud of my country, and glad to pay, through taxes, for others when they may need help as well.
Below are some illustrative shots of this place. It's probably a "Forum" topic, as to what others have encountered as cyclists around the world, but if anyone wants to post a comment about it, it would be interesting.
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However, as a native of San Francisco, CA, I grew up on Parisian Sourdough bread. Spoiled child that I was. ;)
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Tomorrow's interesting topic: Finding a train in France if you have a bike!
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Here in a nutshell some of our hospital experiences while traveling. Once in Siem Reap, Cambodia for severe deydration and diarrhea (a luxury hospital for foreigners where you had to pay a horrendous sum up front before they admitted you - later Janos' insurance covered it), Thailand for a sprained back (competent and free), India for a bronchial infection (where we saw the most outdated x-ray equipment you can imagine). The details would be interesting but that would be too much for a comment. At home I have been in the hospital in nearby Starnberg more often than I can count in the past year. The place is beautifully situated, light and airy, friendly, costs covered by my health insurance and the food is edible (not the case in many hospitals). We are always extremely thankful for our medical care here in Germany.
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- 1989, in Nova Scotia, when Rachael woke up scarcely able to breathe a few days after I crashed her coming down from the White Mountains in New England.
- 2010 in Verona, after I tore my quadriceps tendon on a ski trip;
- 2015 in Portland, when Rachael suffered a concussion when she crashed on bike trail;
- 2017 in Foix, when I needed emergency care after an apparent food poisoning episode;
- 2021 on the Mohican reservation in Wisconsin when I needed resuscitation after a debilitating arrhythmia episode.
Even at home we’ve always been blessed to receive excellent medical care (obviously we’re privileged to be able to afford good health insurance); but the experiences in Foix and Verona impressed me the most. Foix especially - I was in their ER all day under observation and on a saline drip, and it wasn’t free. Two months later back home we got a bill for €50, payable online.
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