The Mexican Medical System
After three days of chest pains I finally broke down and called the office of my cardiologist here in Guadalajara (I had a heart attack a few years ago). I called at 2:00 pm on a Monday and tried with my poor Spanish to explain to the receptionist what the problem was. She asked me if 5:00 pm was ok. I said yes and asked what day it would be. She said it was for that very day.
If you live in the US, when was the last time you could get to see a specialist doctor with three hours notice? And doctors in Mexico make house calls!
The doctor, who spoke English, gave me a physical exam including an EKG and a sonogram. Total cost? Try eighty dollars.
While the doctor wrote out a prescription for some medicine, I noticed that he had a nervous twitch in his shoulder.
There are several things that I’d like to point out here about the Mexican medical system. One is that in Mexico you can get a lot of stuff over-the-counter that you need a prescription for in the US. This brings the cost of medicine way down when you don’t have to include the cost of an office visit.
Number two is that there are price controls on drugs here. Medicine is a lot cheaper here.
Number three is that when the druggist fills your prescription, he or she gives you back the prescription along with your medicine (as long as it’s not a narcotic). You are free to take the prescription somewhere else for a refill if you find a place that sells for a cheaper price.
The cardiologist had suggested that it would be a good idea if I had an angiogram to see if any of my bypasses had blocked up. I turned him down, but the following day I started having pain in my right shoulder. Enough was enough. I had heart damage from my heart attack because I had ignored warning signs, so I called the doctor’s office.
The receptionist talked to the doctor. He got on the line and asked me if I was free to take the angiogram immediately. I was floored. The doctor was willing to blow off all his afternoon bookings to give me an angiogram just like that.
One thing that Americans and Canadians are famous for in Mexico is that they pay their bills immediately and they pay them in full. This moves you to the front of the line in a lot of places. I’ve had cars removed from garage bays just so mine could be worked on first. You should never, never ask for this who needs an Ugly American - but it’s nice when it happens.
When I got to his office, the doctor already had the hospital admission papers ready. He asked how I had gotten to the office. I told him it had been by taxi, so he casually suggested that I ride to the hospital along with him in his car and I agreed.
Read that last sentence again. The doctor was willing to transport me to the hospital. At the time I felt like I was being treated like royalty. No US doctor that I know of would have made such an offer. US doctors need to maintain that patient-doctor distance. My doctor was completely casual about it, like he was doing a small favor for a friend.
Later on when I talked to Harry about my ride with the doctor, he pointed out an aspect that I had completely missed. If a doctor in the US gave a ride to a patient and had a car accident, or even worse, if the patient died enroute to the hospital, the doctor would be sued to the moon and back.
Has anyone ever realized how much lawyers have shaped life in the US? You can’t have slides or seesaws in playgrounds any more. You can’t serve hot coffee. The pickle in a hamburger can’t be 'defective'. You can’t have a picture of your wife in a swimsuit on your desk because that’s 'hostile'. You can’t sell tobacco. You can’t sell guns. You can’t do this. You can’t do that. Can’t anyone in the US see that the people are losing their freedom there because of the lawyers and their lawsuits?
Congress passes one unconstitutional law after another to take away people’s freedoms. You can’t hire whom you want. You can’t build on your own property. You can’t get into the university that you want because you’re not the right race. People in the US have lost many rights and freedoms. Most congressmen are lawyers. Do you think there might be a connection?
When I walked into the hospital with my own private doctor it was so cool. But then I had to present a credit card to pay the hospital bill in advance. I guess they didn’t want to get stiffed (get it?).
Then I had to take off all my clothes and put on a smock. I was led into a surgery room. The ancient X-ray machine looked like it had been donated from some US hospital back in the 1930s and the surgical knives appeared to be dirty, but I was desperate enough to take a chance and -
No. That’s something out of a horror movie. The room was spotless and had all the latest equipment. My gown was pulled to the side so the doctor could prep my groin area for the insertion of the catheter.
The doctor inserted the catheter and threaded it up into my heart. At that exact point in time I remembered the nervous twitch in his shoulder. Maybe it disappears when he’s operating, I thought.
I watched on the monitor as the dye was released into my heart. At one point the doctor warned me ahead of time that I was going to experience some pain in my left side as he poked around. The nurse held my head down. Yeah, it hurt.
Then the doctor warned me that I was going to experience a flush of heat as he injected something else. I was so surprised that I yelled out, "I can taste it", just before the heat hit me.
As he finished up, the doctor told me that I had no blockages. I guess taking Lipitor works after all.
One of the nurses put a pressure bandage on me by pushing down quite hard on the artery the doctor had used. After about ten or fifteen minutes she taped what felt like a sand filled pillow onto my thigh. Then I was wheeled into a waiting room where I had to lie flat on my back without bending my knee for eight loooooooong hours.
I looked around the room. I was the only occupant. Either I was going first class or the hospital didn’t have 'semi-private' rooms - which I despise. There was a nice couch and a padded chair in the room for visitors not the cheap stools like in the US. That couch was meant for long comfortable visits or as a place to sleep on so that those near and dear could comfort you. How civilized that was. Not like the time my sister had to sleep on a couch in a public room in a hospital. Why is Mexico considered backward?
The windows were open so that I could hear outside traffic and people. I didn’t feel isolated in some sterile space capsule shut off from the rest of the world. I wasn’t in a pre-grave.
There is a problem with some buildings in the US called 'sick buildings'. That’s when the indoor pollution of a hermetically sealed building makes people sick. The open windows prevented that, and considering that there are more germs inside of a hospital than outside of it, airflow through a hospital might be a good thing.
After looking around the room for a while, I asked for a remote control for the TV. When one had finally been located, I had to sign a slip that I would reimburse the hospital for $46 US if the remote disappeared.
I spent the next eight hours watching English language shows with Spanish subtitles. It’s a great way to pickup new Spanish words. If US stations don’t do the same for their Spanish-speaking customers, they should.
I was supposed to spend the night in the hospital, but after lying there for nine hours I decided to leave. The hospital staff presented me with another bill - apparently the first one was just an estimate. The bill included the 15% IVA tax. I was surprised to learn that Mexico taxes medical services.
I had to sign some forms stating that I was leaving against medical advice and I had to talk to the doctor by telephone, but I was determined to leave, so the staff gave in and called a taxi for me.
The next day I retrieved my car from the dealership where they had fixed a bad thermostat, which I had forgotten to tell them about the first time. I was so stressed out over the constant car problems and the surgery that I decided to take a small road trip just something to get out of the city for a while. I decided to follow the periferico until I was north of town and then head north just to see what I could see.
On the periferico I spotted a truck with mud flaps that had a picture of a topless woman with her back to the viewer. I’m sure the driver was hostile to women. Hell, the whole country is hostile to women. Sure, that’s it.
I saw a motorcycle being ridden by three people a father and two of his kids. Not one of them was wearing a helmet. Somebody should have called the police right? Nope, everybody was too busy living their own lives to tell them what they could or could not do. Besides, they looked happy.
I took an exit that looked promising, but the road just snaked through a little village that was in the process of being swallowed up by a growing Guadalajara. The road broke free for a short distance until it entered another small town. An outdoor market choked the road off at that point, so I took a left hand turn. That blasted road had a tope at every intersection block after block of them.
I finally reached the edge of town and came upon a crowd of fourth and fifth graders still in their school uniforms heading for their homes. I noticed that they tended to walk in small clumps of five or six kids smiling playing touching being happy being part of a group.
The groups started to thin out as I drove along until only the kids who lived outside of town were left. One kid stuck his hand up in the air and flopped it around as I neared his group. I couldn’t figure out what he was doing, so I just waved back. Then I spotted another kid who did the same thing, only this time I could see his thumb sticking out. The kids were trying to hitchhike using what I considered a pretty bizarre gesture, but that wasn’t the significant thing.
These ten and eleven year old kids were hitchhiking. To me, that indicated a high level of trust in other people and a feeling of safety. I don’t think you’ll find the equivalent in the US. Once again the 'advanced' country loses (By the way, if you’re a pedophile and think you’ve just read about the happy hunting grounds, think again. When you’re caught, you’ll be shot while trying to escape).
I finally came to a road I recognized the road to Tequila, so I headed there to buy some Mezcal. Mezcal is also made from agaves, but the agave is roasted in dirt pits, which gives it a different flavor than that of tequila
People plant agave on every square inch of suitable land including the shoulders of the road when they exist. I had wondered why agave rustlers didn’t steal the plants when they were planted in such exposed places. Near Tequila I noticed that a group of people was harvesting some really small agaves from along the road.
The agaves were far too small to be used in making tequila. The back of a pickup truck was filled with the plants as the people grubbed out the agaves by hand with mattocks. The only explanation I could think of was that the agaves were being collected to be replanted elsewhere perhaps where mature plants had been harvested. This would definitely speed up the plantharvest cycle.
I bought ten liters of Mezcal for forty dollars (that’s four dollars a liter for those of you paying twenty five dollars back in the US) and headed home.
Life sure has its ups and downs. I was scared during the angiogram and I was even more scared that the doctor would find something wrong. Then I take a drive in the Mexican countryside and see the personal freedom and safety of the people and sense the slow steady rhythms of Mexican life and I know it’s going to be ok.